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Banks, Louis Albert, 1855 

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Soul winning stories 



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SOUL WINNI 
STORIES 



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MAP -1 1926 



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BY 



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Rev. LOUIS ALBERT BANKS, d.d. 

Author of ''' Religious Life of 
Famous Americans'^ 




NEW S^W^ YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



COPYRIGHT, 1902, 
BY AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 



SOUL WINNING STORIES 

IC 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



Just a Word with the Reader. 

Personally I have found life to be the most 
interesting thing in the world. Nothing has ever 
helped me so much as a source of fresh impulse 
and encouragement to increased endeavor as the 
story of success on the part of some one else. 
And surely that was the Master's way of encour- 
aging his disciples for all time to come. The 
stories which Jesus told, and the stories which 
are related concerning the people w^hom he 
healed and who were converted under his 
ministry, are a constant source of power and 
inspiration to Christian people to-day. We get 
faith and courage to cast out devils from men 
now because of the picture we have of that 
redeemed man of Gadara whom Christ trans- 
formed and sent forth to tell to his friends the 
good news of salvation. 

The stories in this book are my own. They 
are culled here and there from a great storehouse 
of such incidents with which God has blessed me 
in the course of my ministry. It has been a joy 
to write them, because the happiest memories I 
have are connected with incidents such as are 
narrated on these pages. I have written them, 
and now give them to the printer, sincerely 
hoping and praying that they may give impulse 
to many another to know the joy of winning souls. 

Louis Albert Banks. 
New York City, 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Preface 5 

1. Preliminary Skirmishes 7 

II. Cayuse and Saddle-bags 25 

III. The Capture of the Street-car Man 39 

IV. How THE Young Bartender Was Saved . . 55 

V. The Winning of the Young Merchant 

AND His Bride 69 

VI. A Grocer's Clerk Who Became a Mighty 

Archer for the Lord 81 

VII. How AN Oregon Towi?? Was Captured 93 

VIII. A Servant Girl's Quartet 109 

IX. An International Incident 123 

X. Won Through Friendship 137 

XI. An Old Saint's Surprise 149 

XII. The Boy in the Dry-goods Box 165 

XIII. Wayside Conversions 177 

XIV. The Railroad Revival 189 

XV. On the Trail of a Soul 201 

XVI. A Wayside Capture 213 



CHAPTER I 
PRELIMINARY SKIRMISHES 



CHAPTER l: 



IT was my providential fortune to 
be born and brought up on the 
extreme frontier in Oregon and 
Washington. My father's log cabin stood 
within hearing distance of the roar of the 
breakers that beat against the Pacific 
Coast line. It was there in a little coun- 
try college that I received my education, 
having been prepared by my mother, so 
that I entered the classes with full-grown 
men when but eleven years of age. At 
sixteen I went with my family to Eastern 
Washington, with all a college boy's 
dreams and hopes; but deep down imder- 
neath was a conscious undercurrent of 
conviction that my life work was to be 
found as a preacher of the Gospel and a 
winner of souls. 



10 Soul-Winning Stories. 

I had not reached my seventeenth 
year when the church of which I was 
then a member, the United Brethren, 
licensed me to preach, and at a camp- 
meeting on the httle Touchet River? 
where the session of the annual Confer- 
ence was being held, they set me to preach 
my first sermon. It was a Monday after- 
noon. The camp ground was in a beau- 
tiful grove, and a large platform, roofed 
over, with a board across the front, about 
waist high to the preacher, served as a 
pulpit. There was a large congregation, 
and I was extraordinarily nervous. I 
had written many essays and orations 
in school, but had made no written 
preparation for this sermon. Among 
the circle of preachers with whom I was 
acquainted in my boyhood written ser- 
mons were the one unpardonable sin in 
a minister. The result was that, though 
I had carefully thought out my sermon, 
I made a poor estimate of the length of 
time it would take me to deliver it. My 



Preliminary Skirmishes. 11 

text was, ^'For the wages of sin is death; 
but the gift of God is eternal life through 
Jesus Christ our Lord/' I went at it 
with all the force I had, and delivered 
my introduction, my firstly, secondly, 
and thirdly, and then, as I once heard 
Spurgeon say, I gave my ^^ moving ex- 
hortations'^ and finished up. It was 
done in exactly eight minutes. I then 
quit, having said everything that I had 
prepared to say on the subject. In later 
years I have often congratulated myself 
on the fact that I stopped when I got 
done. 

One amusing experience of that first 
sermon I can never forget. There was 
an old brother, with white beard and a 
bald head, sitting right in front, almost 
under the pulpit. He seemed greatly 
pleased at seeing so youthful a specimen 
in the pulpit. At that time I weighed 
but eighty-five pounds and was only five 
feet and a half high. My boyish appear- 
ance stirred the old man's soul, and on 



12 Soul-Winning Stories. 

the slightest provocation he burst forth 
in hallelujahs and amens. He gave 
them out with such an explosive force 
that, nervously strung up as I was, he 
made me start every time. But, poor 
old fellow, he got his ^'come-up-ance,'' 
as they used to say out there. There 
was a big brass candlestick, with a good 
chunk of candle left in it, standing on 
the board in front of me. It had been 
left over from the night before. Just as 
I got well going in my sermon, one of 
my gestures took that candlestick in its 
sweep and over it went, striking the man 
in the middle of an amen, and also in 
the middle of his bald head. It was a 
great dampener on the brother, and 
the sermon was so short that he did not 
recover himself in time to make any 
further encouraging remarks. 

Very soon after receiving my license 
to preach I went off on an autumn 
preaching tour with an old man who had 
a license to exhort. We must have 



Preliminary Skirmishes. 13 

made an interesting couple to lookers-on^ 
He was as old as I was young. He had 
a long white beard that reached below 
his belt. He was not an educated man,^ 
except as education may be had with 
dealing with the hard experiences of 
life; but he was a good man. He loved 
God and he loved the souls of men. He 
had a tremendous voice and could be 
heard a long way, and his gift in prayer 
was something phenomenal. He is one 
of the few people I have known whose 
prayers seemed to be inspired of the Holy 
Ghost. We were together some three 
months, traveling nearly all the time on 
horseback, preaching almost every night, 
and on Sundays two or three times. The 
combination was one well calculated to 
draw large audiences. My extreme youth 
was a great attraction among the people, 
the little country newspaper spoke kindly 
about me, and the news spread every- 
where, so that we usually spoke to large 
numbers of people for a country region. 



14 Soul-Winning Stories. 

The rapid tour, however, gave little 
opportunity for serious evangelistic work, 
upon which my heart was set, and on 
our return home in the early winter I 
was willing to disband, as the old man 
had wearied, and begin work by myself. 

The region being sparsely settled and 
preachers scarce, their circuits covering 
hundreds of miles, the demand for any 
one who could preach the Gospel in sim- 
plicity and from a loving heart was very 
great. 

After a week or two at home I decided 
to go to a community about a half day^s 
ride from where my father lived and hold 
my first series of evangelistic meetings. 
I rode into the community by noon, went 
to the school-house, which was the only 
place of meeting in the neighborhood, 
saw the school-teacher, and announced 
that I would preach there that night at 
'^ early candle lighting.^' Then I rode 
on around the outlying sections of the 
conmiunity, visiting houses that would 



Preliminary Skirmishes. 15 

not be likely to hear the word from the 
school-house, telling them about the 
meeting and inviting them to attend 
that evening. This was the universal 
custom, as there were no churches and 
but few Christian people. The preacher 
was literally a seeker after souls, a shep- 
herd gathering up a scattered flock, most 
of whom were as wild as the wolves. At 
noon I had stopped and made friends 
with a family who gladly gave me my 
dinner, and in the evening had taken 
my supper at the last house where I 
called before dark. The people were 
hospitable, the country was new, preach- 
ers were not often seen, and the humblest 
of them were always made welcome, 
except at the most churlish firesides. 

I went early to the school-house that 
night and watched the people come in. 
Only one man was earlier than I, and he 
was building a wood fire in the stove. 
He had brought with him one candle, 
which he put in the neck of a bottle and 



16 Soul-Winning Stories. 

stood it on the school-teacher's deskj" 
which served for a pulpit. But soon the 
people began to come, in wagons and 
on horseback, and as nearly every family 
brought a candle, they were soon throw- 
ing out their light on the bare walls of 
the school-house and on the live and 
interesting faces of men, women and 
children who filled the little room to 
overflowing. 

The school-teacher led the singing, 
and we sang the old hymns which every- 
body knew (and knows), for I do not 
suppose there were more than two copies 
of any one hymn-book in that whole 
neighborhood. I read the Scriptures and 
prayed and preached — all in less than half 
an hour. It was many months after 
that before I ever preached longer than 
fifteen minutes. But I preached on 
great themes: Death, Hell, Heaven, 
the Judgment, the Atonement, Pardon,^ 
Repentance, Salvation through Faith — 
these were the themes, sharply defined,' 



J 

Preliminary Skirmishes. 17 ] 

presented without doubt and a boyish ; 

love and enthusiasm, which, blessed by ; 

the grace of God, often seemed to ' 
bear everything before them. I never 

preached in those days without inviting | 

immediate confession of Christ. But i 
though on that first evening the people 

had heard the Word with attention, and | 

some even with emotion, there was no j 

response, and I was correspondingly ■ 

discouraged. ; 

I went home with one of the families 

present, and remained over night, having i 

announced a meeting for the next night. ; 

The next day I spent riding still farther j 

afield, spreading the news of the meeting j 
and coming back to preach at night. A 

still larger crowd was present. Indeed, j 
every foot of standing room was taken, 

and great interest and a deep spirit of i 

conviction seemed to pervade the au- ] 
dience; but not a move of any kind could 
I secure. 

I was at my wits' end, and almost 



18 Soul-Winning Stories. 

ready to believe that my call to the 
ministry had been revoked. That night, 
however, I went home with a new family, 
where the woman of the house was a 
Christian. We were scarcely seated in 
the house before she said, ^^Now, my boy, 
you must not feel that it is your fault 
that the meetings are not going better, 
for I know exactly where the trouble 
lies.^^ I was awake in a minute when 
she said that. Then she told me that the 
two wealthiest men in the community, 
the men having the largest and best 
stocked ranches and the most influence, 
had been in a feud for a long time and 
would not speak to one another. To 
make it worse, one of these men was the 
son-in-law of the other, and the family 
quarrel had been very intense and bitter. 
And what was still more serious, from my 
standpoint, both families were professed 
Christians. This bitter feud had been a 
scandal and a shame to Christianity in 
the neighborhood and lay like a giant 



Preliminary Skirmishes. 19 

boulder across my path in trying to win 
the people to Christ. If Christians were 
going to act in that way, the rest of the 
neighborhood did not want to be Chris- 
tians. 

This was an eye-opener. But, hard as 
was the problem presented, it greatly 
relieved my mind. The next morning, 
after prayerful consideration, and pledg- 
ing this good woman to pray for me, I 
set out to heal that feud. 

I have never seen a person more as- 
tonished than was this old man when I 
went to him and laid my plea before him. 
I told him that he was standing in the 
way of the Holy Spirit ^s winning souls 
in that community; that, as he was the 
older man, he could afford to be generous. 
But he was proud and hard and would 
not yield. 

Then I went to the younger man and 
put it to him that men and women were 
living there without hope of heaven, and 
he was making Christ seem ugly to them, 



20 Soul-Winning Stories. 

and that, being the younger man, it was 
the right thing for him, out of considera- 
tion for his father-in-law's age, to go more 
than half way toward a reconciliation. 

The houses were only three-quarters of 
a mile apart, and I kept the road hot all 
day. Early in the day I found that the 
mother and the daughter were very 
tender toward each other, and that their 
hearts were with me in my attempt to 
make peace. I had supper with the 
elder family, and, finally, as I was going 
away to the evening service, the old man 
agreed to announce a morning service at 
eleven o'clock the next day at his house, 
saying that if his son-in-law would come 
to the service, he would forgive him and 
make peace. 

Of course this was a great start toward 
victory, and I went before the crowd 
in the school-house in triumphant spirit; 
but there was still no response to my 
passionately earnest appeal to them to 
become Christians. But at the close of 



Preliminary Skirmishes. 21 

the service, when I announced the morn- 
ing service at the home of the old man, 
there was great excitement. People 
turned to each other with looks of great- 
est interest. Everybody seemed to feel 
that something was going to happen. So 
great was this feeling that the next day, 
though the service was at such an early 
hour, work was dropped, and the big 
living-room and dining-room and the 
adjoining bedroom of the old-fashioned 
farmhouse were crowded with people. 
I had a hard time that morning, getting 
the young man to give in sufficiently to 
come ; but his wife helped me, and at last 
he yielded. When he arrived, with his 
family, just before the meeting began, 
the excitement among the neighbors 
present was up to fever heat. I have 
preached to many an audience since, 
sometimes when there were many thou- 
sands of people listening, but I have 
never more keenly felt the atmosphere 
of an audience than I did that day. 



22 Soul-Winning Stories. 

I preached a short, tender sermon, 
about twelve minutes long, and then 
announced that we would have a brief 
testimony meeting, and that if there 
were any present who would like to say 
a few words about their own religious 
experience, or express a purpose to serve 
Christ more faithfully in the future, I 
would be glad to hear from them. All 
was silent for two or three minutes. It 
seemed like ten minutes to me. The 
old man and the young man were waiting 
against each other; but, finally, the old 
man rose to his feet. He was a fine 
looking man, of venerable appearance. 
As he stood and looked around on his 
neighbors his lips trembled and his eyes 
filled with tears. At last he said broken- 
ly, ^^ Neighbors, I have not been doing 
my duty to God. I have not lived in 
my family as I ought to have lived, and 
I fear my influence in the neighborhood 
has been to make people doubt Christ. 
My anger hid it from me until — '' and he 



Preliminary Skirmishes. 23 

turned to me — ''God sent this young 
man to show me my sin. But my anger 

is all gone now, and if will forgive 

me, we will have peace and do our duty/' 
As the old man finished he turned toward 
his son-in-law and stretched out his arms. 
Everybody was crying. The young 
man's heart was melted, and a moment 
later he was in the old man's embrace. 
The mother and daughter found each 
other soon, and a spirit of reconciliation 
and love filled the air. 

You may well believe that that scene 
cleared the atmosphere, and that night, 
in the little school-house, seven people 
responded to my invitation and tear- 
fully sought and found hope in Jesus 
Christ. In the days that followed the 
revival influence swept through the entire 
community, and in a large number of 
families father and mother and all the 
children were converted to Christ. 
Under God, it was the healing of the feud 
that did it. 



CHAPTER II 
CAYUSE AND SADDLE-BAGS 



CHAPTER II. 



THE minister who has never ridden 
a Far Western circuit has lost 
an interesting chapter from the 
possibihties of his experience. My 
first regular circuit riding was done as 
an assistant pastor, or, rather, ^^ assistant 
preacher-in-charge/^ for that was the 
term used, to my uncle, who was 
'^ preacher-in-chief/ ^ I was with him 
the six winter months, for in the Willa- 
mette Valley there are only two seasons, 
the summer and the winter. The sum- 
mer is comparatively dry and the winter 
is nearly always very wet. Our circuit 
reached from the city of Portland east- 
ward as far as settlements had gone into 
the Cascade Mountains, and from the 
Columbia River on one side across two 



28 Soul-Winnins: Stories. 



to 



counties to the south. The country was 
heavily timbered, for the most part flat, 
and the roads muddy, and the lot of a 
circuit-rider such as to try his soul and 
develop in him many Christian graces- 
I had no horse, and a benevolent 
brother on the circuit offered to let me 
have one for his keep. I think his 
benevolence was mixed with a desire to 
be rid of the horse for awhile and to 2:et 
him broken. He was a wild, vicious 
beast, with no sense, and led me a terrible 
life. I remember one forenoon I had 
a long ride to make to reach a log school- 
house where I was to preach at eleven 
o'clock. Rain had been pouring for 
many days and nights, and the streams 
were overflowing their banks every- 
where. Ordinary brooks had become 
small rivers. And to make it worse 
the road was new to me, and I could 
only plunge ahead and take things as I 
found them. I came upon a stream 
which usually was a little affair, but the 



Cayuse and Saddle-bags. 29 

bridge had been washed away and the 
water had spread out for a long distance 
on either side. The water was dirty, 
and there was no telling how deep it was 
until you tried it. At the first lunge 
of my horse his head went out of sight 
and the water washed through my 
saddle. Up he came,' gave a terrific 
snort, and, leaping as far as he could, 
went down again to the bottom. This 
time the water struck imder my armpits. 
Up again came the horse, snorting 
wildly, and with another fearful lunge 
he went onward and then down, again 
hugging the bottom. This time the 
water gurgled around my shirt collar, and 
I held my chin up to keep it out of my 
mouth. Luckily, we had reached the 
lowest point, and two or three lunges 
more brought us into wading depths 
The horse had no idea of swimming. If 
the stream had been wide enough he 
would have drowned himself. As it was,' 
he had given me a very uncomfortable 



30 Soul-Winning Stories. 

preparation for a morning's discourse. 
I could not stop; I had eight miles yet 
to ride, and went on as fast as the horse 
could gallop. When I reached the little 
school-house in the big woods I found 
that, notwithstanding the rain, it was 
filled with people, some of them having 
come on foot several miles over trails 
in order not to miss the one chance they 
had once a month of hearing the Gospel. 
I went in and stood by the stove a 
moment, and then with my wet clothes 
steaming I conducted the services and 
preached as best I could. I had some 
dinner in a humble home near by and 
rode eighteen miles farther that after- 
noon to preach again that night. 

As the winter deepened we began to 
hold evangelistic meetings at the leading 
points on the circuit. We were usually 
alone in these meetings, the circuit being 
so large that we followed each other 
alternately around. We often began 
a meeting on Saturday night and would 



Ca3ruse and Saddle-bags. 31 

continue over until about Wednesday 
of the next week. On more than one 
occasion that winter a whole neighbor- 
hood was tremendously shaken by these 
simple straight-forward services. It was 
in those country places that I learned 
the secret which has been one of my 
greatest sources of power ever since, and 
that is, if you want to get at a man's 
real heart and break down his defences 
in your effort to win him to Christ, you 
must get him alone by himself. It is a 
great waste of time to talk to a man 
personally about his own salvation in the 
presence of other people, unless he has 
already decided and needs your help, 
and even then it is better to get him 
alone. That winter I also learned that 
if a man showed deep interest in the 
meeting, and was almost persuaded to 
be a Christian, it was not well to let the 
next day go by without having a personal 
conversation with him. If I could man- 
age it I got an invitation to be at his 



32 Soul-Winning Stories. 

home, and that night, in front of the big 
fireplace, when all the rest of the house 
were asleep, or the next morning out 
among the stock or in the field or the 
pasture, I found the opportunity to open 
the gate straight into his heart, and many 
a man was converted in those heart- 
searching conversations and the tender 
prayer that followed later. 

At the close of the six months in this 
field where I had been an assistant a 
brother died who had been in charge 
of a large circuit a hundred miles or 
more south of us, and the presiding elder 
put me in charge for the rest of the year. 
I arrived on the scene in the early spring, 
when the mud was deep and heavy, as it 
is in a country full of swales about the 
time it begins to dry up. I had received 
only a hundred dollars of salary for 
the last half year's work and was still 
without a horse. A good brother came 
to the front with a little pony. It was a 
very gentle, nice pony, but its legs were 



Cayuse and Saddle-bags. 33 

SO short that when we got into a very 
bad mud hole it would stick, and I would 
have to get off and walk. The months 
on that circuit, however, were months 
of great enjoyment. It was an old and 
famous circuit, with a great many strong 
Christians among both the men and 
the women, who had rare spiritual graces, 
and my association with them will never 
be forgotten. The time of year for 
evangelistic services had passed before 
my coming to this circuit, as the farmers 
were plowing and sowing, and it was 
almost impossible to get them out to 
service on a week evening. 

Everything was looking forward 
toward the camp-meeting. I heard 
wonderful stories of the great times they 
had known on the old camp-ground, and 
the camp-meeting that year was no 
exception. The people came from a 
circuit of forty to fifty miles around. 
There were no cottages or buildings 
made of timber of any kind, but the 



34 Soul-Winning Stories. 

people brought their canvas tents, and 
by the middle of the week it looked like 
a white city. Scores and scores of tents 
went up in long rows on every side. 
The whole grove and all the people in it 
were given up to spiritual things. No- 
body thought about entertainments or 
amusements. They had come there to 
worship God, and all day and part of 
the night was given up to it. The first 
thing that would be heard in the morning 
would be the voice of some one singing 
hymns, and then, as the people gathered 
for morning prayers, the sound of singing 
and prayer would rise from a hundred 
tents. I have never seen anything else 
like it on earth; but it was as beautiful 
and glorious as it was unique. 

A portion of ground immediately in 
front of the ''preacher's stand,'' suffi- 
cient to seat about one hundred and 
fifty people, and fenced in by poles 
nailed on to the sides of trees, was called 
the altar. This, as well as the region 



Cayiise and Saddle-bags. 35 

beyond it, was seated with rude benches 
without backs. The ground was covered 
with fresh straw to keep it from becoming 
too dusty. At eight o'clock there was 
a prayer and iSong and praise service. 
At nine o'clock there was a sermon. 
At eleven o'clock there was another 
sermon. At about two-thirty there was 
another sermon, and at four o'clock 
there were what they called '^ brush 
prayer meetings," where leading men 
among the laymen would invite their 
brethren and any that were seeking 
Christ, and any others who were still 
holding out against the Lord, to go with 
them into the woods for a quiet prayer 
meeting. The women held a meeting 
of their own for women onty, with the 
same purpose in view. I have known 
these meetings to be a most powerful 
agency in the winning of souls. Again 
at night there was a sermon. Of course, 
after every one of these sermons there 
was an after service. The sermons were 



36 Soul-Winning Stories. 

often informal and *^ scattering/' but 
they were all earnest and Scriptural and 
all devoted to the one great purpose of 
winning men to Christ then and there. 
Every sermon closed with a direct appeal 
for the sinner then present to cease his 
rebellion against God and surrender to 
his Lord. 

The exhorter came next. Those were 
the days of exhorters. Whenever as 
many as two preachers were together 
at any evangelistic meeting during my 
younger ministry, it was understood 
that one would preach and the other 
exhort. Multitudes of men in our great 
pulpits whose ministry is not being 
blessed by the conversion of souls would 
become great soul-winners if they could 
only have a year's training as exhorters. 
At this great camp-meeting which I have 
been describing the exhorters followed 
every sermon all day long. It is quite 
an art to get up after a man has ceased 
preaching, catch the spirit of the meeting 



Cajruse and Saddle-bags. 37 

where he has left it, and carry it right 
on with well chosen words or striking 
illustrations, intensifying it as you go, 
until the time for action has come. The 
invitations given were for immediate 
decision for Christ. The front benches 
were cleared, and the people who would 
make a public confession of their purpose 
to surrender to the Lord were invited to 
come and kneel there. Then preachers 
and laymen sought out their friends and 
acquaintances through the audience 
and with tears and entreaties persuaded 
them to come to Christ. 

I have seen many great revivals under 
a great variety of circumstances; but I 
have never seen any place where the 
presence of Almighty God was more 
apparent, where the conviction of sin 
seemed to be a more real and terrible 
thing, where the members of the church 
were more passionately in earnest for 
the salvation of men; nor have I ever 
seen more marvelous surrenders of the 



38 Soul- Winning Stories, 

human will to God, or clearer and brighter 
instances of happy and joyous conver- 
sions that issued into the steadfast and 
holy Ufe, than I witnessed on the old 
Brownsville camp-ground in Oregon. 



CHAPTER III 

THE CAPTURE OF THE 
STREET-CAR MAN 



CHAPTER III. 



T was in the days when the horse- 
car was in all its glory, shortly 
before the electric trolley came 
on the scene and sent the horses 
back to the farms. It was my first 
pastorate in an Eastern city, and 
I had the care of a small church that was 
situated in a populous suburb. The 
general location was excellent, but one 
thing greatly annoyed my congregation; 
this w^as the existence of a great horse- 
car stable just across the street from us, 
where the cars were coming in and going 
out constantly to make the changes of 
horses and men. Whenever anything 
nice was said about the church by one 
of our people to another, or by any out- 
sider to them, there was always that 



42 Soul-Winning Stories. 

reservation, ''If only that old street-car 
barn were out of the way.'' As Mordecai 
to Haman when he wouldn't bow to him, 
so that old bam took the edge off all our 
joys. ^ 

This old street-car barn was anno3dng 
in many ways. In the first place, it did 
not smell good; in the second place, it 
was very noisy; and finally, and the 
most important, there was always a 
large group of from twenty to fifty horse- 
car conductors and drivers off duty, who 
were hanging around the doors of this 
barn. They were an unusually wicked, 
blasphemous lot of men, and they natu- 
rally attracted other men of the same 
ilk, and it became notorious as a place 
that was noisy and vulgar, where women 
were stared at and remarked upon. 
Every decent woman took the other side 
of the street and hurried past when she 
had to go arovmd that corner. 

After I had been pastor of the little 
chm-ch for a few months, it was borne in 



The Capture of the Street-car Man. 43 

upon me that something must be done 
to change the condition at that car- 
barn corner. After thinking it over and 
praying about it a good deal, I called 
my official board together one Sunday 
morning, after the sermon, and told them 
that I believed our church had a duty 
in relation to that horse-car bam. I 
said to them, ''You have tried to get 
away from the place and you have tried 
to get them to move away for a long 
time, and nothing has ever come of it. 
Now my judgment is that it is all provi- 
dential. God has put us here to save 
that crowd. This is the duty that is at 
our door. I want you to back me up 
in a series of revival meetings. We will 
not tell people so, but the great object 
of all will be the saving of the conductors 
and drivers who have their headquarters 
at that horse-car barn.'' 

They were greatly astonished. Most 
of them thought I was optimistic beyond 
reason, and that we would never get any 



44 Soul-Winning Stories. 

of them to come to the meetings. Two 
or three, however, took fire at the ear- 
nestness of my own heart, and after 
talking it all over they all agreed that it 
was worth trying, and we set to work. 
For six weeks we held meetings day and 
night. We had preaching every evening, 
but I soon found that the best hour for 
the horse-car men was about nine o^clock 
in the morning when the morning rush 
was over. More men were at leisure 
between that and eleven than at any 
other time. So I added another meeting, 
especially for them at that hour. 

Well, the Lord blessed our labors. 
We parceled them out. I hunted the 
church through to find out who in the 
church had personal acquaintance or 
influence with individual drivers and 
conductors, and I set everybody praying 
for their own acquaintances among these 
men, and urged each one to try to answer 
his own prayers by seeking them out and 
bringing them to the meetings. It was 



The Capture of the Street-car Man. 45 

not long before this work began to tell,' 
and, one after another, they were being 
converted. 

From the very first I found that the 
greatest obstacle to a successful work of 
grace among the men at the bam was in 
the person of the car-starter. He was a 
man past middle age, and a man of great 
force of character. He was sharp and 
witty, and his keen tongue could always 
raise a laugh or bring the blood, if, as 
often, he chose to use it as a lash. With 
ail this, he was a big-hearted man in 
many ways, and very popular among 
the drivers and conductors. But he 
hated God, he hated the church, he hated 
Christians, and above everything else 
he hated Christian ministers. There was 
nothing his sharp tongue could say that 
was bitter enough and mean enough if it 
could raise the laugh against a preacher 
and show his contempt for him. I very 
soon discovered that many of the men 
were holding back for fear of running 



46 Soul-Winning Stories. 

the gauntlet of his tongue. When I 
found this out, I went straight to him 
and told him so, thinking I might sober 
him with a sense of responsibility in the 
matter; but he contemptuously cursed 
me and told me to mind my own business. 
I quietly told him that I should pray 
God to open his eyes to his wickedness, 
and went away. 

I told some of the people in the church 
about it, and we covenanted together 
to pray daily for the starter^s salvation. 
Every day, now, I was about the barn, 
inviting men to the meetings, encouraging 
some who had already started, specially 
working with others, and, incidentally, 
coming in contact with the starter. 
Every day there was some bitter, vulgar 
sneer or wicked oath hurled at me, and 
when assured that I was praying for 
him he would almost grind his teeth in 
rage. This matter went on for some 
three weeks, when one night, just as I 
was sitting down at the table for my 



The Capture of the Street-car Man. 47 

supper, the door-bell rang, and, on 
opening it, there stood the car-starter^s 
wife. She was greatly excited. "Oh," 
said she, "I wish you would come to 
our house right away. My husband is 
in a terrible condition.'' 

" Why, what is the matter?'' I inquired. 
I supposed there had been some accident 
about the barn. 

"Oh!" she replied, "he is in an awful 
condition. I left him walking the floor, 
and wringing his hands in a perfect agony. 
He thinks he is going to be lost. He 
says he has conmiitted the unpardon- 
able sin and there is no hope for 
him." 

I shall never forget the thrill of joy 
that ran through me as the woman told 
me that story. Involuntarily I ex- 
claimed, with great fervor, " Thank God ! " 

She looked at me almost dazed, and 
inquired, "What do you mean?" 

"I mean," was my reply, '^that this is 
the beginning of better times for your 



48 Soul-Winning Stories. 

husband. If he is feeUng Uke that,' I 
am sure I can do him good.'' 

"Well/' she said, "if you can do him 
good, he surely needs it, and that very 
soon.'' 

I forgot all about my supper, and 
throwing on my hat and overcoat hurried 
with her to her home. When we went 
in, I found she had not overstated the 
case as to the starter's feelings. He was 
in the deepest anguish. Despair was 
written on every line of his face. The 
Holy Spirit had opened up before his 
gaze the awful hell that was in his heart. 
He seemed utterly without hope. As 
soon as he saw me he cried, "There is 
no hope for me! How wicked I have 
been! And I knew better, too. But I 
have hated God and I have hated you. 
I have said every mean thing about you 
that I could lay my tongue to. And I 
have abused the members of the church; 
I have picked flaws in them. I have 
made fun of every man that has started 



The Capture of the Street-car Man. 49 

to be a Christian. I have done all I 
could to keep them back, and I fear 
some of them will be lost because of 
what I have said to them." 

As soon as I could get a word in I 
said to him, ^^ Remember, it is not your 
sin, it is not your wickedness, that is in 
the way of your salvation." 

He looked at me astonished. ^'What 
is in the way, then?" 

I replied, ^^The only thing that is in 
the way is your unwillingness to ask 
Christ to forgive you, and to accept his 
forgiveness." 

That was a new idea to him. Then I 
told him the old story of the thief on 
the cross, and the other story of that 
poor, demon-possessed man at Gadara. 
I could see that the last one took hold of 
him. He seemed to feel that the man 
who had a whole legion of devils in him, 
all of whom were cast out by the power 
of Jesus, was a case that gave hope for 
him. After we had talked perhaps ten 



50 Soul-Winning Stories. 

minutes, we kneeled down to pray. I 
never heard a man pray with such aban- 
don for himself. I thought all the neigh- 
bors on the street would hear. He cried 
out to God. He did not mince matters 
in telling the Lord about his sins. Final- 
ly his heart broke. The tears came, and 
in that flood of tears his faith caught 
sight of the Christ who died for him. 
His heavy burden rolled off like the load 
from the shoulders of Bunyan^s pilgrim 
at the cross. He rose up from his knees 
with a new look in his face and a new 
joy in his heart. 

He said he must go at once to his work 
at the barn, as he was due there in a few 
minutes; but I was so anxious to thorough- 
ly intrench him in his new life that I 
took him across with me to the church, 
where I knew a little prayer-meeting 
was going on, and he went in with me, 
and there gave his first testimony for 
the Lord. 

The car-starter's conversion created 



The Capture of the Street-car Man. 51 

great excitement in the community. 
People flocked to the meetings, and the 
revival received a new impetus. Over 
two hundred were hopefully converted, 
and over a hundred and fifty were added 
to my church. But that which pleased 
me especially was that fifty of my new 
church members were made up of twenty- 
five street-car men and their wives. 

From that day till this, now a good 
many years, the car-starter has lived 
a Christian life. His influence every- 
where has been for Christ. He has led 
many to the Lord through the purity of 
his life, the sweetness of his spirit, and 
the holy boldness with which he bears 
his testimony to the power of Christ to 
forgive sins. 

One of the sweetest compensations 
for the self-sacrifice which is often de- 
manded of a Christian minister is found 
in the love and devotion of the men and 
women who are won to Christ through 
his efforts. Some years after the car- 



52 Soul-Winning Stories. 

starter's conversion, lecturing one night 
in a far-distant State, I found him in my 
audience. Nothing would do but that 
I must go home with him for the night. 
I had to take a train at half -past two in 
the morning, but he assured me that he 
could wake at any hour, and there would 
be no danger of my getting left. When 
he aroused me in the morning, and I 
went down to find a cup of hot coffee 
waiting for me, something in the car- 
starter's face convinced me that he had 
not slept. 

^'Look here,'' said I, ''you have been 
sitting up all night. I can see by your 
eyes that you have not been asleep. 
You are too old a man to do a thing like 
that." 

I shall never forget the answer. His 
lip quivered, his eyes filled with tears, 
and as the great drops rolled over his 
cheeks, he said, ''Ah, you do not know 
what a joy it is for me to do something 
for you. If I were to sit up all night,^ 



The Capture of the Street-car Man. 53 

once a week, as long as I live, it would 
be nothing compared to what you have * 
done for me/' 

I have seldom had anything touch 
me more deeply than those words. I 
thought of what Paul said to the Gala- 
tians whom he had won to Christ, in 
recognizing their love for him: ^^I bear 
you record, that, if it had been possible, 
ye would have plucked out your own 
eyes, and have given them to me.'' 
Many times since that night, when I 
have been tempted to discouragement, 
and wondered if the hard work was 
worth while, I have recalled the car- 
starter's tears, and his words of gratitude 
and love, and, thrusting aside my de- 
pression, I have thanked God and taken 
courage. 



CHAPTER IV 

HOW THE YOUNG 
BARTENDER WAS SAVED 



CHAPTER W: 



SOME years ago, in Boston, a 
young man and his sister came to 
see me one evening in great 
trouble concerning their brother. The 
story they told me was one of those heart- 
breaking stories that come so often to 
the ear of the minister of a large city 
church. 

These young people were from Nova 
Scotia. The father had died some years 
before, and the mother had been left with 
a large family with only one of them old 
enough to be of any help. This boy was 
the 3^oung man who had come to see me. 
He told how his mother had dreaded to 
have him leave home, but there had to 
be help from the outside or the family 
would be broken up and scattered, and 



68 Soul-Winning Stories. 

SO with a breaking heart she let him go 
away to Boston to work. Tears ran 
down his manly face as he told of the 
last night at home, of the Bible his mother 
gave him, and of her earnest pleading 
with him to lead a Christian life in the 
strange city. 

Well, he came to Boston, found 
work, joined the church, and had got 
along well. He sent back all his wages 
that he could spare to help the mother 
and the children at home. After a while 
the next one to him, a girl, became old 
enough to come to Boston and enter 
into domestic service, and now, for three 
or four years, the two had been working 
to make the burdens lighter for the old 
mother in the far-off Canada home. 
They were both earnest Christians and 
honest, self-respecting young people. 
And now they came to the burden of 
their story, which had brought them to 
me. They were not members of my 
church, but as I had been very closely 



How the Young Bartender Was Saved. 59 

identified with temperance work, they 
had hoped I might be of value to them 
in their great emergency. 

This was their trouble: Two years 
before, George, a younger brother, and 
the very idol of his mother^s heart, had 
also come to the city. He had had the 
same careful training by his devout 
Christian mother, but he had gotten 
employment where he had been thrown 
into evil associations and had been led 
into the habit of drink. This had lost 
him his place, and, in spite of all they 
could do, he had taken a place as a bar- 
tender some six months before their 
coming to me. After this his downfall 
had been rapid. He had drunk and 
drunk until he was bloated, and 
his beautiful features were becoming 
coarse and revolting. They had come 
to me hoping that I might be able to 
advise them. They had not written 
their mother about his condition, for 
they feared it would kill her if she knew; 



60 Soul- Winning Stories. 

and I have seldom in my life seen anybody 

in sorer trouble than were that brother 

and sister. 

I must confess that it seemed like a 

very hopeless case. We prayed together 
about it, and I urged them to keep on 
praying for him, and to use every influ- 
ence they had to get him out of the busi- 
ness, and, in the meantime, if any oppor- 
tunity offered, to bring him to me, so 
that I might talk with him. 

About two weeks passed, when the 
young woman came to see me alone, 
saying that her brother had lost his 
place as bartender because of his drunk- 
enness, and she was hoping that now 
there might be a chance to do something. 
It so happened that, the day before her 
visit, the proprietor of a newly estab- 
lished sanitarium for the cure of drunk- 
enness had met me on the street and 
told me that if I would send them some- 
one in whom I was particularly interested 
they would treat the case free. I told 



How the Young Bartender Was Saved. 61 

the young girl about this, and begged her 
to bring her brother to me, and see if 
we could not persuade him to go to this 
sanitarium. She immediately caught at 
this, for he had been sick for a few days 
and was now thoroughly sober and 
seemed to be more repentant and to have 
more feeling concerning his condition 
than he had shown for a long time. 

The next morning she brought the 
young man to my study. In spite of 
the awful traces of dissipation he was a 
handsome young fellow and bore in his 
features and especially in his eyes the 
unmistakable traces of real manhood. 
Poor fellow, he had been caught in the 
deviFs net by his genial heart, and his 
feet had been tripped from under him, 
as have the feet of ten thousands of 
others, almost before he knew it. I saw 
that he was now thoroughly ashamed 
of himself, and that, while willing to do 
anything, he was almost entirely hope- 
less of any good coming of it« 



62 Soul-Winning Stories. 

I had a long talk with him about it, 
told him of several cases that had come 
imder iny own observation of men who 
had been greatly helped by medical 
treatment in overcoming the drink habit, 
and after I had gotten him thoroughly 
interested and somewhat encouraged I 
quietly urged upon him the greater cure 
for all sinfulness that was to be found 
in the Great Physician. I suggested to 
him that all his troubles had come to 
him because he had been tempted out 
of the path in which he had been brought 
up. That after coming to Boston none 
of its wickedness would have affected 
him if he had retained his habit of Bible 
reading and prayer and church-going 
which his mother had taught him — 
putting himself in the care of the Saviour. 
At the mention of his mother he was 
deeply moved, and as I talked gently 
and tenderly about her his pride seemed 
to break down completely and he cried 
like a child. 



How the Young Bartender Was Saved. 63 

''Oh! I know it! I know it!'' he said. 
"She is praying for me! I have tried to 
forget it for a year, but I know she is still 
praying! It would kill her if she could 
see me now.'' 

Then I assured him that his mother's 
God was also his God, and that if he 
prayed to him, even now, in his sin and 
sorrow, God would hear him and forgive 
him. When I asked if he would like 
to have me pray with him, he exclaimed 
most eagerly, ''Oh, yes J do!" 

It was borne in upon me by the Holy 
Spirit hat it was the crisis hour of the 
man's soul. We kneeled down together, 
I on one side and his sister on the other. 
I poured out my soul in prayer, and she 
followed in supplication. I do not think 
I ever heard such a prayer for another 
as that sister poured out to God. I 
doubt if she had ever heard her own 
voice in prayer before. She was a timid 
little body and I do not imagine that 
she had ever prayed aloud in meeting 



64 Soul-Winning Stories. 

in her life. But, oh, how she prayed 
that morning! She told the whole story 
over again to God. It was a new parable 
of the Prodigal Son, except that it was 
a mother waiting at home, and the poor 
prodigal, with the smell of the swine 
still on him, was just now coming to 
himself. 

When the sister had finished her 
prayer, I urged him to pray for himself, 
and he did so, in broken incoherent sen- 
tences at first, but soon in a perfect flood- 
tide of repentance. And then, suddenly 
a great thing happened. I never could 
tell just how it came; it reminded me at 
the time of the words of Jesus to Nico- 
demus, '^The wind bloweth where it 
listeth, and thou hearest the sound 
thereof, but canst not tell whence it 
Cometh, and whither it goeth ; so is every- 
one that is born of the Spirit.'' So it 
was in this case. Suddenly the agonizing 
man ceased to agonize. He stopped 
praying right in the middle of a sentence, 



How the Young Bartender Was Saved. 65 

and though his tears still flowed, and 
great sobs shook his frame, both the 
sister and myself felt that a great change 
had come. 

I turned to look at his face and found 
him turning to look at me. His face was 
wet with tears, but there was infinitely 
joyous wonder shining in his eyes, and 
I said: ^^ George, are you forgiven?^' 

And he said, and with the very first 
words his joy increased: ^^My burden 
is gone! Yes! He forgives me!'' And 
then we all sprang to our feet, and the 
sister hugged him and kissed him, and 
we all cried again, but this time they 
were tears of joy. 

Soon I began to speak about the 
arrangements for his going out to the 
sanitarium. Then he turned to me and 
said, ''I do not believe I will go." 

'^Why?" I inquired, astonished. 

'^Well,'' he said, ^'I came intending 
to go, because there seemed nothing 
else to do. It was my only hope,' and I 



66 Soul-Winning Stories. 

had not much faith in that. But now 
it seems different. God has forgiven me. 
I have Christ, my Saviour, to help me, and 
I am going to trust him.'' 

Of course I was greatly surprised, and 
not entirely easy as to the outcome. 
But there was something about it all so 
strongly indicating the presence and 
power of the Holy Spirit that I did not 
try to change his purpose. After grate- 
fully thanking me, they went away. I 
kept track of them for many months, 
and during all that time George lived a 
strong and courageous Christian life, hav- 
ing gained constant victory over all 
temptation from the old appetite which 
had so degraded and despoiled him. 

There were several factors in the young 
bartender's salvation. First of all, on 
the human side, was that faithful mother 
whose prayers and Christian fidelity he 
could never forget. Second, there was 
the loving faithfulness of that Christian 
brother and sister; and, finally, there 



How the Young Bartender Was Saved. 67 

came my opportunity, and the leading 
of the Holy Spirit to impress me to seize 
the critical moment when he could be 
won to surrender himself to God. It 
was one of the clearest cases of instan- 
taneous conversion, which thoroughly 
transformed the man, that I have ever 
witnessed. 



CHAPTER V 

THE WINNING OF THE YOUNG 
MERCHANT AND HIS BRIDE 



CHAPTER V. 

IT was my last Sunday in a far 
Western town. My pastorate was 
closing with the day, and the 
morrow was to see me on my jour- 
ney, two hundred miles by team and 
three hundred more by rail, to my next 
pastorate. Just after the sermon began 
in the morning I noticed a young couple 
come in and take a seat near the church 
door. I did not take note of them 
specially again, and did not note them 
at the time, except that I made a mental 
memorandum that they were strangers; 
but having retired to the parsonage after 
the morning service, on answering a 
knock at the door, I found the same 
couple on my door-step, and taking them 
in at a glance said to myself, 'They 
have come to get manied." 



72 Soul-Winning Stories. 

The young man said they would like 
to have a little private conversation with 
me, if it were convenient. This deepened 
my first impression, and I led them into 
my study and closed the door. I offered 
them seats, and the young lady sat down, 
but the young man was under a nervous 
tension, and remained standing. In a 
straightforward manly way he said: 

^^We live in C , thirty miles away. 

We were married this morning. We 
have been engaged for a long time, but 
this young lad}'', who is now my wife, 
has been afraid to marry me for seme 
months until to-day.^' 

He scarcely seemed to know how to 
go on, and to help him out I inquired, 
'^What was the trouble?'' 

^' Well, you see,'' he replied, ^4t is this 
way: I am a storekeeper. I keep a 
general dry-goods and provision store, 
and along with other things I always 
keep a barrel of whisky on hand to sell 
when people want it, as all the other 



The Winning of the Young Merchant. 73 

storekeepers do. Well, I got to drinking 
it myself, and I took too much several 
times, and Mary was frightened, and 
was afraid to marry me for fear I would 
turn out a drunkard. This morning I 
promised her that if she would marry 
me we would drive up here to see you. 
We have seen in the papers how earnestly 
you are fighting the saloons and working 
for temperance, and I told her I would 
come here and ask you to write out a 
pledge, and then I would sign it, and 
never drink another drop while I lived. '^ 
There was no mistaking the ring of 
manly purpose in the young man's voice 
and the flash of earnestness in his eyes 
as he said these words, and instantlv I 
thought of the day when the young man 
stood before Jesus, and the Master, look- 
ing on him, loved him. I felt that I was 
standing in the Master's place, and that 
I must be true to his soul. So I said: 
"I like you. There's something about 
you that goes right to my heart. But 



74 Soul-Winning Stories. 

let me understand what it is you want 
me to do/' 

^^Why, I want you to write out a 
pledge not to drink any more, and I will 
sign it." 

"But you will go back home this after- 
noon and sell the whisky to-morrow to 
anybody who wants it, just the same?" 

His face fell, but after a moment he 
said, "Why, of course I could not keep 
store in this country without selling 
whisky. I would lose all my trade." 

"Then this is what you mean," said I. 
"You mean to sign this pledge not to 
drink any more. But you will go back 
to that town and you will sell whisky 
to any other man who wants it. You 
are going to keep your own self sober and 
clean, but you will sell the stuff to others 
that you know will ruin them, soul and 
body. You are going to make your wife 
feel safe. When you go down town in 
the morning, you are going to have her 
peaceful and at rest, never fearing that 



The Winning of the Young Merchant. 75 

you will come back with a hellish smell 
on your lips and with the stagger in your 
limbs. But you are going to keep every 
other woman in tovv^n trembling and 
afraid.'^ 

By this time I was ablaze with inten- 
sity of feeling, and looking him straight 
in the eye, I thundered, "No, sir; I will 
not do it. I will not have any hand in it. 
I will not soil my fingers with so mean a 
thing as that. But I will tell 3^ou what 
I will do. If you will let me write a 
pledge that you will not only quit drink- 
ing it, but that you will never sell it again, 
or have anything more to do with it, I 
will gladly ^vrite it. And that is the only 
pledge you can keep. You think you 
would keep the other, but I know you 
would not. You have already got a 
taste for it, and with that thirst in you 
it would be impossible for you to sell it 
long without coming to drink it again 
yourself. Do something worthy of 
yourself. Stop it altogether. Do that, 



76 Soul-Winning Stories. 

and I will join you with all my 
heart/' 

It was an electric moment. Eye 
flashed to eye, and I saw the decision 
when it came in his eye, and he exclaimed, 
not feebly, but with a volume of manly 
purpose, "rildoitr^ 

Then an inspiration came to me. 
The glow of the sermon was yet on me, 
and it flashed through my mind that 
no other man would ever have such a 
chance to win these two people to Christ 
as I had just then. When once I felt 
that inspiration I was compelled to go 
on. I had shaken hands with him on his 
decision, and still held him by the hand. 
Gripping it anew, I said : " My brother, 
do something better than that. This 
is your wedding day. In all the years to 
come there will never be another day like 
this. To-day you are setting up your 
home. Everything is possible to-day. 
Why not stop all sin to-day? Why quit 
just one sin? Why quit the drink alone? 



The Winning of the Young Merchant. 77 

Why not join with your wife in dedicating 
this new home of yours to the service 
of God? Why not promise God here 
and now that, by his help, you will not 
only break off this one sin, but break 
off every sin, and begin a life of prayer 
and trust in God? Why not ask him 
now, for Christ^s sake, to forgive your 
sins and start you in this new life in a 
new spirit?^ ^ 

The Holy Spirit helped me. The 
young wife had been weeping almost from 
the first of my talk to him, and as my 
heartfelt appeals followed one after the 
other the t^ars came to my own eyes, 
and the great tears welled up in his and 
rolled down his cheeks. Again I saw 
the light of decision come into his face. 
He tightened his grip on my hand until 
I felt a thrill of pain, as he almost 
shouted: ^^God helping me, I'll do it!'^ 

We knelt there together, the three of us, 
on the study floor. I poured out my 
heart to God in earnest prayer to send 



78 Soul- Winning Stories. 

forgiveness and regeneration to these 
young hearts. The young man prayed, 
and then the young woman. And thus 
we prayed and cried together until the 
Hght of faith came into their hearts and 
smiles of confidence illuminated their 
faces. 

It was a unique pledge that I wrote 
out. I have often wished I had kopt a 
copy of it. In it he promised not to 
drink or sell liquor, and to live prayer- 
fully the Christian life. He signed it, 
his wife signed it, and I signed it. I 
gave it to her, and they went away. 

The next day I went on my journey. 
After a brief pastorate in my new home 
I came over three thousand miles east- 
ward. Five years had gone before I 
knew of the issue of that hour in my 
study. Then a lady came to visit me 
in Boston, who had been living in that 

town of C at the time of the young 

merchant's visit to my study, and this 
was the story she told me: The young 



The Winning of the Young Merchant. 79 

man and his bride returned that Sunday 
evening to their home. Without waiting 
imtil the next morning, he went and got 
two or three of his friends, told them 
of his pledge, and of his new purpose, 
and took them with him to his store, 
where they deliberately rolled his barrel 
of whisky into the street, and with an 
axe drove in the head of it and let the 
liquor run into the gutter. Naturally, he 
was made the butt of a good deal of ridi- 
cule, and everything possible was done 
to put temptation in his way. But all 
to no avail. He never had a drop of 
liquor about the store again, and while 
it had been predicted that he would lose 
his trade, and he himself had expected 
to lose it, it had turned out otherwise, 
and his business had prospered more than 
ever. He set up a family altar in his 
new home and let everybody know of 
his new purpose to lead a Christian 
life. A few weeks later a minister came 
to the town and organized a little union 



80 Soul-Winning Stories. 

church. Our young merchant and his 
wife were on hand to become charter 
members. A Sunday-school was organ- 
ized, of which he was made the superin- 
tendent, and at the time of the lady's 
visit that young man and his wife were 
the very pillars of religious influence 
and power in that whole community. 

I think that was the most joyous in- 
formation that ever came to me. My 
heart was filled with it and my soul 
exulted. I do not think anything that 
has occurred in my whole career has ever 
given me a greater impulse to make the 
winning of souls the chief end of my 
ministry. God has many kinds of joy 
for his children to compensate them for 
all their self-denial on earth's pilgrimage, 
but the sweetest joy and the most satis- 
fying that I have ever known is the joy 
of feeling that I have been instrumental 
in his hands of winning others to Christ. 



CHAPTER VI 

A GROCER'S CLERK WHO BECAME 

A MIGHTY ARCHER FOR 

THE LORD 



CHAPTER VI. 



I DO not know if other ministers 
have the same feeUng or not, but, 
personally, I have always a great 
timidity in going to a new church, 
and never have much comfort or 
feel at all sure of my standing ground 
until I am rejoicing over some converts 
in the Lord's name. When I came from 
Cincinnati to South Boston, some years 
ago, and took the pastorate of a large 
church in the midst of a populous dis- 
trict, I came from a year of wonderful 
revival success; and yet I remember 
the many anxious days and some almost 
sleepless nights for fear my method of 
preaching and work might not fit the new 
parish to which I had come. It was, 
therefore, with great joy that I got on the 
track of my first man in the new field. 



84 Soul-Winning Stories. 

He was a grocer^s clerk, and I met him 
first at the parsonage door when he came 
to see if he could get my trade. He was 
a quick-eyed, ruddy-cheeked young fel- 
low, short and round, but alive, every 
inch of him. I was very much pleased 
with him, and before he got away I 
inquired : ^^ Where do you go to church?'' 

"Well, to tell the truth, Dominie, I 
don't go anywhere." 

"Why not?'' 

"Oh, I don't know. Got out of the 
habit, I guess. I used to go to church 
at home in Nova Scotia." 

"Well, " I said, "you will have to come 
and see me now, anyhow. Turn about 
is fair play. If I buy your goods, you 
will have to come and take some of my 
goods." 

That seemed to strike his fancy, and he 
went away saying, "All right, I'll come 
around next Sunday night." 

To make sure he did come around 1 
went to the store on purpose the next 



A Clerk Who Became a Mighty Archer, 85 ' 

i 

Saturday afternoon, and looked him up, j 

and reminded him that I would be look- ^ 

ing for him. ^ 

It was my habit then, as now, to be at \ 

the door of the church Sunday morning ! 

and evening when the church is opened, ; 

and shake hands with the people when * 

they come in, till time for the service 

to begin. So the next Sunday evening ; 

I was on the lookout for my grocer's i 

clerk. When he came I had a word with ' 

him. I said to him,^^I have been think- i 

ing about you and praying about you ever 

since I talked to you the other morning 

at my house.'' I told him that I had j 

been homesick all the week because ! 

there was not a man or a woman in the I 

community whom I had won to Christ. i 

"And now," said I, "I have been hoping 

and praying that the Lord will give me ; 

you to-night. I somehow feel that it j 

was providential that you came to me | 

the other day, and that if you will begin | 

to be a Christian at once we shall begin \ 



86 Soul-Winning Stories. 

OUT pastorate here together,' and you 
and I together can do a great deal of 
good with the blessing of God/' 

He seemed very much touched. He 
was a noble fellow, and the brotherly 
way in which I approached him, and my 
appeal to his better self to come to Christ 
so that he could do good, seemed to get 
hold. 

The theme of the sermon that evening 
was the stor}^ of the little boy who had 
the loaves and fishes which, in the hands 
of Christ, became sufficient to feed the 
multitude. It gave me a great chance 
to get at my young clerk, and I pressed 
the Gospel home, with him in mind, with 
all the power I had. The Holy Spirit 
blessed the message. I could see by 
his glistening eye and the rapt look on 
his face that he was greatly interested. 

At the close of the sermon I announced 
that there would be an after-meeting in 
the vestry, and urged Christians and all 
others who were interested to remain 



A Clerk Who Became a Mighty Archer. 87 

with us. To my great joy my grocer 
clerk came in, and, on my giving an oppor- 
tunity for any who would like to begin 
the Christian life to manifest it by rising, 
he was almost at once on his feet. He 
was the only one who started that eve- 
ning. When we knelt to pray, I asked 
him to come and kneel with me at the 
altar, so that I might talk and pray 
with him. He came, and as he knelt 
there the whole fountain of his nature 
seemed to be broken up. He melted 
down in complete surrender to God. 
He had not knelt there five minutes 
until his face was full of joy and gladness 
and the peace that passes all understand- 
ing filled his heart and illumined his 
eyes. 

When after a few moments we had a 
little testimony meeting, he stood up 
and in the manliest way told how I had 
spoken to him, and how he had come 
that night with no expectation of be- 
coming a Christian at once, but that my 



88 Soul-Winning Stories. 

words at the door had set him thinking 
and that during the sermon a great 
longing had taken hold of his heart to 
make his life worth something to some- 
body by giving it to Christ. He said 
there wasn^t much of it, not any more 
than there was of the little boy's loaves 
and fisheS; but if the Lord could do any- 
thing with it he should have every crumb 
of it. 

This was the second Sunday night of 
my pastorate, and one of the happiest I 
can remember. For the young clerk's 
conversion was so bright and clear, 
and his testimony so evidently sincere, 
that it melted the entire church, and 
started the year's work with a great 
evangelistic uplift. I would have been 
happier yet, if it were possible, if I had 
known the full measure of what it meant 
to win that young man. He at once set 
himself to work. He made it the rule 
of his life that he would never let any 
Sunday go by without having at least 



A Clerk Who Became a Mighty Archer. 89 

one new man, who had not been in the 
habit of coming to church, with him at 
the Sunday-school and at the church 
service, and it was not uncommon for 
him to have two or three. He hunted 
these up while he was on his rounds, 
taking orders for the grocery store, and 
in any little wayside opportunity that 
came to him. He brought these men to 
the church and got them enrolled in the 
men^s Bible class. Then he introduced 
them to me and to some earnest Christian 
men. Having got them there, he worked 
for their immediate conversion. Many 
a time I have had him come back to me 
after going in with a man to the Sunday 
night^s service. He would excuse him- 
self for a moment, and slipping out he 
would come to me at the door, where I 
was shaking hands with the people, and 
he would whisper to me as he got a chance 
any information about the character or 
the history of the man which he thought 
would be valuable to me in making the 



90 Soul-Winning Stories. 

sermon more effective in winning him 
to Christ. Many a valuable point did 
he give me in that way which I was able 
to use with profit. 

Then, when the after-meeting came, he 
was always at the man's elbow to draw 
him quietly in to this service, and as 
he had come with him, having usually 
met him by engagement for that purpose, 
it was not easy for his companion to get 
away without being rude, and it was 
impossible to be rude to so good-humored 
and kindly a fellow as our grocer's 
clerk. And so in the after-meeting he 
was ready to say a kind word or offer to 
go with a man to the altar, or to motion 
to me cautiously at the critical time to 
add my invitation to his, which often 
turned the scale and brought about a 
permanent decision for Christ. 

If one of his men started for the altar 
he was with him, and he knelt beside 
him, praying and crying for joy, watching 
over him with a tender solicitude that 



A. Clerk Who Became a Mighty Archer. 91 

was the wonder and joy of the whole 
church; and when the hght broke into 
the darkened mind, and the soul of his 
companion lost its burden of guilt and 
was able to testify that his sins were 
pardoned, the next happiest man in that 
room was the grocer's clerk. He could 
hardly contain himself. He laughed and 
cried, and often, when opportunity was 
given to testify, he was too full for utter- 
ance, and would, perhaps, only say a 
sentence or two, such as, "Christ is the 
best paymaster in the world''; or, "I 
would rather have the joy of winning 
a friend to Christ every week than have 
the biggest store in town.'' But no 
matter what he said, it was always some- 
thing that just bubbled out of his heart, 
something that touched the fountain of 
tears in every heart in the room, and 
lifted us all nearer to God. 

In the first six months after my grocer's 
clerk was converted he brought to the 
church, by actual count, twenty-five men 



92 Soul-Winning Stories. 

who were hopefully converted to God 
and joined our church. He was influ- 
ential and very helpful to many other 
men, but these twenty-five were all his 
own. He hunted them up on the outside, 
and brought them to the church himself, 
and after he got them there stayed with 
them till they were happily converted. 
And yet he was hard at work all the time, 
working the long hours ol a grocer^s 
clerk. 

How quickly the world would be 
brought to Christ if we could set all the 
men and women of our churches as 
earnestly at soul-winning as this man 
gave himself. He is still at it. It is 
now many years ago since this young 
man was converted, but once in a while 
I run across him, and I always see the 
old light in his eyes, and loiow that, like 
Uncle John Vassar, he is faithfully hold- 
ing on at his work as "God/s shepherd 
dog." 



CHAPTER VII 

HOW AN OREGON TOWN WAS 
CAPTURED 



CHAPTER VII. 



IT was in my young days, when I 
was yet a circuit-rider. I had 
been sent to Southern Oregon 
to carve out a circuit where no 
preacher had ever wrought, except in 
one httle valley, where there was already 
a class established which met in a school- 
house. Twenty miles away there was a 

town on the railroad at D , which 

gave the name for the circuit. It had 
the reputation of being a very wicked 
town, and it certainly lived up to its 
reputation. I spent my first Sunday on 
my new circuit with the lonely band of 
Christians in the little valley hemmed in 
bv the mountains, but I had written to 

the postmaster of D that I would 

preach there in the school-house on the 
next Sunday. 



96 Soul-Winning Stories, 

I arrived in D on Saturday night,' 

and Sunday morning went over to the 
school-house. It was a small affair of 
only one room, barren and barn-like. 
Just eleven people came to the services 
that morning, nine women and two men 
— one, a man from three or four miles 
away, who in a mild way was a Christian, 
and the other the man with whom I had 
stayed all night. 

Giving emphasis to the emallness of 
our congregation, some two or three 
hundred men were gathered together at 
a horse-race in plain sight of the school- 
house, out on a little level flat adjoining 
the town. Their yelling was very annoy- 
ing during the entire services. My host 
had told me that the horse-race had been 
arranged for that spot in special resent- 
ment against the fact of a preacher having 
been assigned to the region. 

I preached as best I could, and then 
told my few hearers that I had sent 
notice for a service in another school- 



How an Oregon Town Was Captured. 97 

house some ten miles away for that 
evening, but that I would come back and 
preach the next Sunday morning and 

evening in D , and I wished them to 

tell everybody they saw that week that 
if they would come to church the next 
Sunday they would find the school-house 
full of people. They looked surprised 
and amused, as though they thought I 
was in for a big disappointment. But 
when I saw that horse-race in the morn- 
ing I felt that the battle was on, and that 
I was either to be defeated or to win a 
victory that would mean everything to 
my success right there in that town. So 
I determined on a bold measure. 

I rode on and preached to a handful 
of people in a little farm settlement on 
Sunday night, and Monday came back 

again to D and remained there for 

the week. During that week I visited 
every house where a human being lived 
within several miles of the town. I went 
into the saloons, and into the mills, into 



98 Soul- Winning Stories. 

the logging camp, into every store and 
private house. Everywhere I had the 
same story to tell. I told them the 
experience of the last Sunday, that there 
V had only been eleven out to hear the 
Word of God, while there were nearly 
three hundred in the drinking, gambling 
carousal at the horse-race. 

"Come, now,'' I would say, "give the 
)( Lord a fair chance. The devil has been 
having a frse hand here for a long time, 
and he has made a bad mess of it. Come 
and give me a hearing. Let decent 
things at least have turn about with the 
devil.'' 

That sort of talk aroused their atten- 
tion and caught their fancy. By Thurs- 
day of that week I was the one subject 
of conversation for five miles around. 

On Saturday something happened that 
gave me great hope and courage. Every- 
where I had gone I had asked, "Do you 
s^ know of any Christian in the commu- 
/ nity?" and I had always received the 



How an Oregon Town Was Captured. 99 

answer, ^^Yes, there is one/' and then 
they would go on to tell me about a sick y 
woman who lived up on a mountain 
some miles from town. She had been 
confined to her room for a number of 
years, but everybody bore testimony 
to the fact that she was a Christian, and 
they usually ended up their remarks of 
appreciation with this sentence: ^^If \ 
ever there was a Christian, she is one/' 
Saturday morning I went up to see 
her. It was a lonely place, and I remem- 
ber thinking what a terrible thing it 
must be to live there year after year 
chained to one's bed by sickness. But 
when I was ushered into her room I for- 
got all about this. I shall never forget y 
the look on that woman's face as I came 
in. The news had found its way up the 
mountain, and she knew what was going 
on. As I came into the room her face 
was full of joy and expectancy. She v, 
clapped her hands together, and, with 
tear-wet eyes, exclaimed, "I thank God 



100 Soul-Winning Stories. 

that my prayers are answered at 
lastr' 

Though every line in her face revealed 
the traces of the pain she had suffered 
and the long years of her confinement to 
the house, yet it was a face of wonderful 
peace. Her faith in God never wavered 
and she had that spiritual insight which 
miakes of pain a tutor to culture and to 
ennoble the soul. 

As I sat there by her bedside she told 
me that several months before my coming 
there had been some terrible results 
from drunkenness in the community, 
and she had begun to pray to God every 
day that he would send a preacher to 
the town who might be instrumental in 
bringing about a revival of religion and 
the conversion of the people, and that 
when she heard that I was in the neigh- 
borhood and was going about from 
house to house she had felt an answer 
of peace and now thoroughly believed 
that God had answered her prayers and 



How an Oregon Town Was Captured. 101 

that we were to have a great work of 
grace. 

You cannot easily imagine how much 
comfort that was to me. I was very 
young, but little more than a boy, and 
the loneliness of this effort to get a hold 
on that community, without any church 
to back me up, was very hard, and this 
good woman^s conversation, her praA^ers, 
and her faith were a divine tonic to me. 

I stayed for dinner in the house, and 
prayed with her again in the afternoon, 
and went away to the wicked little town 
feeling that I had been in an "upper 
room" like that where the disciples 
waited for the power which made Pente- 
cost possible. 

The next day that school-house would 
not hold half the people who came. Not 
only every seat, but every bit of standing 
room in it was taken, and, as the weather 
was mild, the people crowded around the 
windows and around the door. There 
was not a great deal of preliminary 



102 Soul- Winning Stories. 

service. I had a hymn-book, and the 
man I have spoken of, who had belonged 
to the church in other years, and who 
had been present the Sunday before, 
also had a hymn-book. I never could 
sing much, and he carried a tune very 
lamely, so that the singing was very 
weak and lifeless. But I read the Scrip- 
tures, and I poured out my heart to God 
in prayer that the people before me might 
have hearts to receive the Word of God, 
might see their own sinfulness and be 
willing to accept Christ as their Saviour. 
Then I stood up to preach. I knew I 
could not preach much, but I gave them 
the Word of God. My text was, " Where- 
fore do ye spend money for that which 
is not bread? and your labor for that 
which satisfieth not?'^ 

As I had gone around during the week 
^^ I had gathered a great many incidents 
of the awful havoc of sin, especially of 
gambhng, drunkenness, quarreling and 
fighting in that very community; 



How an Oregon Town Was Captured. \08 

and now, with absolute fearlessness, I 
went straight at them about their own 
sins. I tried to show them that the 
devil was a hard master, and that they 
had been serving him and working for 
him very hard, and had very poor satis- 
faction for it. I only preached about 
twenty-five minutes, but it was long 
enough to make some of them fighting 
mad, to melt others to tears, and to send 
some others away looking very solemn. 
At the close of the service I announced 
that I would preach that night on "The 
Sin and Doom of Drimkenness.'^ 

As soon as I had pronounced the bene- 
diction a stage-driver, who had the repu- 
tation of being the most wicked man 
in the community, and who was ruining 
his family by drunkenness and gambling, 
came up, swore a horrid oath, and said 

I must find it lonesome, and he 

pitied me, interlarding every sentence 
with an oath. But he ended by asking 
me to go home with him to dinner. I 



104 Soul-Winning Stories. 

accepted, and as we walked along home 
I became convinced that, in spite of all 
his swearing and his bold manner, the 
man was hard hit, and that God had used 
the morning service to deeply convict him 
of sin. I acted on this idea, and stuck 
to him that whole afternoon like a leech, 
and prodded at him in every way I 
could. I charged him with ruining his 
boys, and told him that unless he re- 
pented now and turned over a new leaf 
they would soon be so far gone he never 
could bring them back. In spite of his 
wickedness he was by nature a generous- 
hearted man, and I urged upon him 
the good he might do by boldly turning 
his back on the devil and leading in a 
surrender to Christ. 

He made me no promises that after- 
noon, and tried to make me believe that 
he was indifferent. But I felt sure that 
he was not. At night we had as big a 
crowd as we had had in the morning. 
The school-house was lighted with can- 



How an Oregon Town Was Captured. 105 

dies hung up around the walls. I 
preached that night on, ''Know ye not 
that the unrighteous shall not inherit 
the kingdom of God?^^ I read that 
awful list that Paul gives, in which 
drunkards are specially named, and with 
all the power that was in me I uncovered 
the horrors of drunkenness. I illustrated 
it with incidents that I had gathered 
during the week in their own neighbor- 
hood, with which they were acquainted. 
If I had done this in a hard way, no 
doubt they would have mobbed me. 
But I was dead in earnest, and I was 
young, and so evidently tender and sin- 
cere about it that the Holy Spirit made 
them listen to it. I had not spoken 
thirty minutes when tremendous con- 
viction fell upon the congregation. Men 
as well as women were sobbing and 
crying. I asked the men to get up from 
a bench in front of me, and then I pleaded 
for those who would cease their sins and 
turn to Christ to come to that bench 



106 Soul-Winning Stories. 

and kneel down there. The first to 
come was the stage-driver, and his wife 
came with him. His prompt action 
had great effect. Others crowded for- 
ward, and every bit of room on both 
sides of that bench was soon crowded 
with those who were kneeling there. I 
prayed awhile, then I talked awhile, 
and then prayed again. There was no- 
body to sing, and nobody else to pray, 
imtil after half an hour or so the stage- 
driver was happily converted, and then 
he exhorted and prayed. The meeting 
did not break up till nearly midnight. 
Some ten men were hopefully converted 
that night, and three or four women. 

I announced that there would be a 
meeting every night that week, and asked 
them to bring any old hymn-books they 
had, no matter what kind. I spent the 
days of that week visiting among the 
people, and talking and praying in their 
homes, and preaching at night. We 
begaa to have good singing. They 



How an Oregon Town Was Captured. 107 

brought all sorts of books, but we sang 
the old hymns that were in all of them, 
and as the people were converted it was 
wonderful how it aroused their musical 
powers. Before the week was out we 
had good congregational singing. 

I could only stay ten days at that 
time, as I had appointed a meeting in 
another place, but I left a class of sixty- 
five men and women. It became the 
main point on my circuit. Before the 
year was out we raised money for a 
church, and had land and money given 
to build an academy, and it has been 
for years a church-going academy town. 
But that revival was the way the trans- 
formation was begun. 



CHAPTER VIII 



A SERVANT GIRL'S QUARTET i 

4-^ I 



CHAPTER VIII. 



ONE can never tell how great a 
victory has been won when a 
man or a woman or a child has 
been captured for Christ. There are al- 
ways possibilities of values in the case 
of which it is impossible for us to dream. 
I suppose when Naaman captured the 
little girl who afterward led to the cure 
of his leprosy, it was considered a very 
insignificant achievement, and yet the 
capture of a major-general would have 
been a small thing compared to that 
victory. For it not only led to the heal- 
ing of Naaman^s body, but it led to his 
conversion to a happy and comforting 
faith in God. The story is told that at 
a certain revival meeting, which lasted 
some weeks, only one little tow-headed 
boy was converted, and that there was 



112 Soul-Winning Stories. 

a feeling of great disappointment among 
the people of that church. But that 
tow-headed lad turned out to be Bishop 
Matthew Simpson, who led multitudes 
to Christ. 

I have had many experiences illus- 
trating this same thought, but I think 
one of the most delightful of them was 
the conversion of a little English girl 
who came to South Boston, Mass., during 
my pastorate there. She had just come 
from the Old Country, and had taken 
service as a cook in a home not far away 
from my church when I first met her. 
She was a little slip of a thing, and looked 
altogether too young and inexperienced 
to be away from home. I well remem- 
ber the feeling of pity and the awakened 
sympathy I had for her the first time 
I met her at the church door and in 
reply to my questionings she told me 
that she was only a month from the Old 
Country and that all her family were on 
the other side of the ocean. She was 



A Servant Girl's Quartet. 113 

not a Christian, but I saw that she was 
in that first period of loneUness and 
homesickness where a Uttle sympathy 
and kindness would win her to the Lord, 
and so I did everything that I could to 
make her feel at home, and as she started 
to go up the stairs I followed her to say : 
''There never could be a better time to 
give your heart to the Lord than to-night. 
He was lonely and homesick himself 
sometimes, when he was here on earth, 
and he knows how to be good and kind 
to homesick folks. Give your heart to 
the Lord now, and you won't be alone 
any more, for there will be a whole 
church full of people who will be your 
brothers and sisters in Christ.'^ 

The poor little girl was so utterly alone 
that a kind word went straight to her 
heart, and with tears in her eyes she went 
on up the stairs, saying, "I will try." 

Sure enough, in the after-meeting that 
very night that little English servant 
girl was converted. She was a quiet 



114 Soul- Winning Stories. 

body, and did not make much show 
about her emotions, but a very sweet 
glow was on her face, and all the lonely 
homesick shadows had gone out of it 
as she went away from the church. 

She went back to the place where she 
was at work, and the next morning her 
mistress was surprised when she came 
into the kitchen and found Annie singing 
over her work. The girPs loneliness 
had touched the kind-hearted woman, 
and she had been very sorry for her, 
but when she came in Monday morning 
all this was gone, and the girl seemed 
so happy that she wonderingly inquired: 
"What makes you so happy, Annie? 
All your blues seem to have blown away/' 

"Oh, Mrs. G , something wonder- 
ful happened last night. I went down 
to the church, feeling so lonesome and 
sad that I almost wished I were dead. 
And the minister was standing at the 
door, shaking hands with the people, and 
he shook hands with me, and asked who 



A Servant GirPs Quartet. 115 

I was, and where I came from, and before 
I knew it he had the whole story out of 
me and knew all about me. I did not say 
a word about being homesick, but he 
knew it, somehow, and told me that the 
best way to get rid of it was to give my 
heart to Christ, who used to be so lone- 
some and homesick, and who knew how 
to comfort us. I never dreamed of 
starting to be a Christian when I went in 
at the church door, but by the time I 
got to my seat I had almost made up 
my mind that I would. And during 
the sermon I said to myself, ^If he gives 
me a chance to-night, I'll start.' And 
so I went to the altar in the after-meet- 
ing, and as I prayed to God all my lone- 
liness and homesickness left me and I 
felt that my sins were forgiven and that 
God would take care of me and not let 
anything bad happen to me over here 
alone. And I came home happy last 
night, and I went to sleep happy for the 
first time since I left home. And this 



116 Soul-Winnins: Stories, 



£> 



morning I feel like singing all thb 
time/' 

Now Mrs. G was not only not a 

Christian, but she was a woman whose 
associations had led her very far from 
Christ and the church. She had felt 
very bitter and unbelieving about the 
church and about Christians, and so 
she watched this new convert very 
narrowly. 

But Annie^s religion would bear watch- 
ing. It was just as natural and simple 
as a child's trust in its parents. And 
as her mistress noticed her good cheer 
and happiness, a great hungering took 
possession of her own heart. She had 
recently had many things to trouble her 
and her heart was very heavy and sad, 
and through the night of her gloom 
shone constantly the cheerful ray of the 
happiness of Annie's new-found religion. 
The girl never preached to her; she just 
lived, cheerful, happy, and loving, but 
somehow everybody in the house felt 



A Servant Girl's Quartet. ll*} 

that this sweet happiness came from 
Annie's reUgion. 

Mrs. G stood it for two weeks, 

and then to Annie's astonishment and 
dehght she said to her on Sunday morn- 
ing, '^ Annie, if you don't mind, I would 
like to go with you to your church 
to-night." She had never even been 
inside the church door, though she had 
lived in the community for years. Of 
course Annie was greatly pleased, and 

that evening she introduced Mrs. G 

to me at the door of the church. 

She had no opportunity to say any- 
thing to me about her, and I knew noth- 
ing more of it until the after-meeting. 
There were several seekers at the altar 
that night, and we had already had a 
season of prayer, when, on rising to sing, 
I noticed that Annie was talking to the 
woman whom she had introduced to 
me, and that this woman was crying as 
if deeply affected. I at once reopened 
the invitation for any others who would 



118 Sotil-Winning Stories. 

like to seek Christ to come to the altar, 
and a moment later the lady arose and 
came with Annie to the mercy seat. She 
was converted that night, and told me 
that very evening the story I have 
related. The cheerfulness and happiness 
of the little cook's religion had appealed 
to her until she had felt that she could 
not live longer without it. 

In less than a month after Mrs. G 's 

conversion she, with Annie, came to the 
altar one evening with the daughter 
of the family, who was happily cou' 
verted. 

A Uttle later Annie told me one Sunday 
afternoon that her brother, with his wife 
and two children, had arrived from 
England during the past week, and that 
she was going to try to bring her brother 
with her to church that night. He had 
been a drinking man, and his family 
had encouraged his coming to America, 
hoping that if he got away from his old 
associates he might break off his evil 



A Servant Girl's Quartet. 119 

habits and live a new life. But Annie felt, 
as I did, that the only real hope of his 
reformation lay in his becoming a sin- 
cere Christian, and so I agreed to unite 
my prayers with hers and to make a 
special effort that evening to reach him 
with the Gospel. 

Sure enough, he was on hand that 
night, a ruddy-faced Englishman, with 
the traces of dissipation written on his 
countenance. I had been forewarned, 
and I make it the rule of my life never 
to disobey such warnings. If I know of 
a special sin of a man in the congrega- 
tion about whom somebody is greatly 
interested at that moment, I never fail 
to find some way to thrust my harpoon 
there, and so I went directly for the 
heart of Annie's brother that night. 
God blessed the message. He came into 
the after-meeting broken-hearted. She 
came with him to the altar, and he knelt 
there, crying like a child, sobbing and 
calling aloud for mercy. He confessed 



120 Soul-Winning Stories. 

his sins and went away with a new peace 
in his heart. 

I was not at all surprised the next 
Sunday evening to see the whole family 
at church. They came early — Annie, 
with her brother and his wife, and the 
two little children, one a baby and the 
other scarcely more. That night it was 
her brother^s wife she had on her heart. 
She marshaled them well front in the 
church, and I knew she was praying 
every minute. It was not a remarkable 
thing that the wife was at the altar that 
night. It is the rarest thing in the 
world where a wife does not readily 
follow her husband when he sincerely 
repents and gives himself to God. And so 
I should have been disappointed indeed 
if she had not yielded to the invitation. 
The young man came with his wife to 
the altar while Annie stayed with the 
babies. 

The sister-in-law did not readily come 
into the light. There was some hesita- 



A Servant Girl's Quartet. 121 

tion, perhaps some lack of clearness in 
her mind about the simplicity of the 
Gospel. Annie stood this delay as long 
as she could, and then I saw her reach 
over to a motherly old woman sitting 
in front, and arrange with her to take 
care of the babies, while she slipped away 
to the altar where, throwing her arms 
around her si3ter's neck, she talked with 
her, meanwhile the tears running down 
her own cheeks. But she successfully 
pointed her to 'Hhe Lamb of God that 
taketh away the sins of the world,'' 
for not five minutes after she came, " the 
light that never was on sea or land'' 
shone in the face of the seeking woman. 
And that was the way the little servant 
girl won her quartet. 



CHAPTER IX 
AN INTERNATIONAL INCIDENT 



CHAPTER IX. 



ONE Sunday afternoon a fine- 
looking girl, evidently of Irish 
extraction, came to see me at the 
parsonage in one of our large cities. She 
had a very sad story. Her mother had 
died some years before, leaving three 
girls and the husband. One of the girls 
was only a little baby at the time, and 
the two older daughters had kept house 
for the father and had managed to keep 
the family together. But the father had 
taken to drink, and it had grown steadily 
worse, imtil now he was drunk a good 
part of the time. At the time the young 
woman came to see me her father was 
just getting up from an attack of pneu- 
monia, and had gone on a spree which 
had come near being the last of him; 
He was now laid up in bed, and the 



t26 Soul- Winning Stories. 

doctor said he would certainly die very 
soon unless he gave up drink. The girl 
begged me to come and see if I could 
do anything for them. 

It seemed like a hopeless case, but I 
comforted her all I could, and promised 
to come before my evening service. Just 
before she left — indeed, after she had 
risen to go — I inquired if she was a 
Christian, and found that she was not. 
I asked her to sit down again, and for 
half an hour, in the plainest, simplest 
way I could, I preached the Gospel to 
her. After the surprise of the attack, 
her sore and w^ounded heart 3delded 
readily to the offered comfort and help, 
and we kneeled together in the parsonage 
parlor, and as I prayed she consciously 
accepted Clirist as her personal Saviour. 

When I arrived at the Irishman's 
home, for I found that though the chil- 
dren had been born in this country the 
father had come over as a young man 
from the North of Ireland, he was still 



I 

1 

An International Incident. 127 ' 



very much under the influence of drink.' 
I had a hard time getting him aroused 
enough so that he would appreciate 
what I had to say. When I did, I talked 
to him very straight, not only about the 
sin of his drinking, but the meanness of 
it with reference to his daughters, who 
were trying to make him a comfortable 
home. I never talked straighter to a 
man in my life. I was perfectly willing 
to make him mad, if only I could stir 
him up and get him out of his lethargy. 
I have often found it is far better to 
make angry a man who is going on in 
wicked ways, which his own conscience 
disapproves, than it is to leave him 
unmoved. It is not a far cry from anger 
to other strong feelings, and if you can 
get a man good and hot at your rebuke 
you can often turn his anger toward 
himself for deserving such talk. 

I finally got him stirred up sufficiently 
so that he began to tell me, as if that 
would hide his own shame, that he came 



128 Soul-Winning Stories. 

of a good old Irish family who were Chris- 
tians, and that his brother was an honored 
preacher in Ireland. As soon as he told 
me this I went for him more strongly 
than ever, and tried to make him feel 
the shame of bringing such disgrace 
on an honored name. Before I left I 
prayed with him and his daughters and 
promised to come again. 

I went again the next day. He was 
clear of the whisky now, but was very 
hard and seemingly without any hope 
of the possibility of becoming a Christian 
or much changing his course of life. I 
talked and talked, and though he let 
me pray with him, I could get no hope- 
ful word with him about himself. On 
that day the second daughter was present 
and she went with me into the hall to 
let me out. At the front door I paused 
and inquired if she was a Christian. 
She said she was sorry to say she was 
not. I told her that I was very glad 
die was sorry^ for that showed that the 



An International Incident. 129 

Lord had been speaking to her, and that 
she was very near to the kingdom. I 
found that her sister had been talking 
with her, and that she was aheady under 
conviction of sin, and very much wanted 
to be a Christian. As we stood there 
by the door, with my hand on the door- 
knob, I told her how simple the terms 
were, and we bowed our heads and I 
prayed for her. When the prayer was 
through the face that she lifted to me 
was full of sweet content, and though 
her eyes were tearful, there was in 
them the glistening promise of a new hope. 
I kept going every three or four days 
to see my Irishman. The man strangely 
interested me. He was a great, tall, 
square-shouldered giant of a man, and 
with a very strong face. I felt if I 
could really capture him for the Lord, 
and change him from the deviPs service 
to that of Christ, it would be a great 
victory. But the work went slowly, 
and I think I never have seen a case, in 



130 Soul-Winning Stories. 

which victory was finally won, quite so 
discouraging as that proved to be, until 
Providence threw into my hands a new 
ally. 

One morning, a few weeks after I 
had first been called in, I received a 
letter from Ireland. It was from the 
brother of my man, who is a distinguished 
and honored minister there. He wrote 
to tell me how glad he was that I had 
been to call on his only brother, and 
to thank me for my interest in him. He 
said drink had been the man's curse 
all his life. He told me he had been 
praying for this brother for many years, 
and that his mother was still living, a 
very old woman and very frail, but that 
she prayed for her boy every day, and 
did not feel that she could go home to 
heaven until he was saved. 

When I got that letter, and especially 
when I read about the old mother's 
prayers, I took hope. I somehow felt 
that the Irishman had to come. I 



An International Incident. 131 ; 

now, at least, had one new lever, and I j 

determined to use it for all it was worth. I 

That afternoon I took my letter and • 

went down to see him. I told him I | 

had a letter from his brother. He was ' 
very much interested, and I could see 
it moved him. I told him his brother 

said he had been praying for him ever I 

since he left home. Then I took the | 

letter out of my pocket and read the ! 

lines about his mother, about her in- I 

firmity and age, and her great anxiety | 

for his salvation, and how she was just ; 

waiting on earth, praying every day ! 
for her wandering boy. 

That letter broke his heart. He had ; 

not yet decided to be a Christian, but ; 

he was full of anguish and remorse. i 

The tears rolled down his cheeks and ^ 
he seemed rather glad that day to have 
me pray for him. Yet I could get no 
decision out of him. 

At the time of this last visit I had i 
begun holding revival meetings and was 



132 Soul-Winning Stories. 

preaching every night. I urged him 
to come to the meeting that night, but he 
would not promise. I felt that I could 
not give up, for if I could not get him 
that day, with the unusual influence 
of the message concerning his mother, 
which had so melted his heart, I never 
would get him. So I kept at it. I must 
have plead with him half an hour or 
more, simply on the point of coming to 
the meeting that night. At last, almost 
in despair, he exclaimed, ^^Well, youVe 
been so kind, and you're so persistent 
about it, I will come.'' 

I was sure he would keep his word. 
He came, and came very early. I was 
. out at the door, shaking hands with the 
people as they came in. His youngest 
daughter, a girl now thirteen years of 
age, was with him. I stopped him, 
and talked a little while in the vestibule, 
urging him to make up his mind that 
night and give himself to Christ; and 
although he would not promise, I could 



An International Incident. IS'd 

see that the conversation of the after- 
noon had greatly moved him and that 
he was in a hopeful condition. I walked 
in with him and saw that he and the 
little girl had seats immediately at the 
front. I did not intend that anything 
should interfere with the Gospel having 
a fair chance at him that night. 

I remained in the vestibule and shook 
hands with the people through the song 
service, not going in umtil it was time 
for my sermon. When I went in they 
were singing, and I could see that the 
service was having the effect I expected 
on my Irishman. He had been brought 
up a Christian. The old hymns brought 
sacred memories to him that touched 
him to the heart's core. He had not 
been to church now for several years, 
and it all came back upon him with un- 
wonted power that night. And when 
the soloist sang a tender and touching 
appeal to come to Christ, I saw a tear 
rolling down over each cheek. I must 



134 Soul-V/inning Stories. 

have preached the Gospel for all, that 
night, for a number accepted Christ and 
were converted in the after-service; but 
my conscious appeal was to the Irish- 
man. I felt as a lav/yer does when he 
knows that one juryman is against him 
and must be convinced, and so through- 
out the sermon I sought to win the 
verdict. A man who has not heard a 
sermon for several years, but who was 
brought up to give reverence to the 
Gospel, finds it hard to withstand a 
straightforward, simple presentation of 
the divine appeal. The Irishman's heart 
broke under it. The agony of his face 
was something terrible. Finally he hung 
his head and sobbed, and at last, when 
the invitation was given for sinners to 
come to the altar and throw themselves 
on the mercy of God, he was the first 
man there. The little girl came with 
him. How he did pray! With tears 
and cryings and groanings he repented 
and laid hold upon the Christ who is 



An International Incident. 135 

able to save unto the uttermost. The 
little girl opened her heart to the Lord 
as naturally as a morning-glory opens 
its bell to meet the dawn, and the two 
of them came into the church together. 

And that is the way God pays. I 
started in on a forlorn hope to save one 
poor drunken man, and I came out, 
through the mercy and blessing of God 
and the prayers of that brother and dear 
old mother, with a man saved and re- 
deemed and three daughters all conse- 
crated to the Christian life. 

I have never had a happier task than 
that of answering the letter of the brother 
in Ireland, telHng him the whole story 
and sending my love and congratulations 
to the dear old mother, who through all 
the years of disappointment and delay 
had not failed to keep her tryst with 
God and to daily send her prayers 
heavenward for the salvation of her 
boy. 



CHAPTER X 
WON THROUGH FRIENDSHIP 



CHAPTER X. 



I ONCE found in the neighborhood 
of my church in a large city a 
family which interested me great- 
ly. It consisted of the husband and 
wife and two children. I became 
acquainted with them first through the 
children, who were in the Sunday- 
school. One day, speaking to one of 
the Sunday-school teachers about the 
bright little girl as she passed us, the 
teacher said, ^' I suppose you know about 
her father ?'' I replied that I did not 
know the father, and asked what she 
meant. Her reply was that the father 
was one of the very best business men 
in the community; that he belonged to 
an old and honored family, and was 
himself a refined and cultivated gentle- 
man; but that he seemed to have an in- 



140 Soul-Winning Stories. 

herited weakness for strong drink. This 
manifested itself in a peculiar way. 
He never went about liquor saloons 
and was never known to drink in one of 
them. Indeed, he would go months at 
a time without drinking at all, and then 
the spell would come on him, and an 
awful thirst would take possession of 
him. He would take liquor home with 
him to his house, and there he would 
drink imtil his stomach and throat 
would be raw with it and he was on the 
very verge of the grave. Then the 
doctor would come in and patch him up, 
and possibly it would be five or six 
months before it would happen again. 
The story moved me very deeply, 
and I saw at once that here was a family 
that needed help. As the children came 
to the Sunday-school, it gave me a right 
to call at the house, and I did so a few 
days after I had heard the story, and 
made a pleasant acquaintance with the 
wife and mother. In response to my 



Won Through Friendship. 141 

invitation she attended the church, and 
I called also at the business place of the 
husband and made his acquaintance. 
I found him as he had been described 
to me, a most delightful gentleman, a 
man full of dignity, and 3^et of fine feel- 
ings and genial, kindly nature. I de- 
liberately set myself to cultivate the 
friendship of the family, and I was met 
half-way by all the parties. It was not 
long before I felt that the time had 
come to press for a decision in the case 
of the wife. I sought her at her own 
home, and urged not only her own obli- 
gation to Christ, but also her duty to be 
a Christian on account of her influence 
upon her husband and children. She 
responded readily to all these appeals 
and definitely accepted Christ and came 
into the church. And it was at this 
time that she opened her heart to me 
and told me the story of her husband's 
weakness and of the haunting fear she 
had that his awful habit would get 



142 Soul-Winning Stories. 

worse and worse until it would; ere long, 
carry him away. I promised her to 
devote myself with all my soul to his 
salvation, and told her that I had been 
thinking it over and had made up my 
mind that the only thing I could do was 
to win his friendship; that I believed 
if I could make him love me I could then 
win him to Christ, for I had seen that 
it was not easy to get back of that wall 
of quiet dignity ana reserve where the 
real man lived. 

So I set myself to make a friend. It 
was not hard work, for I liked the man 
very much. We had many tastes in 
common, and I made much of these. Of 
all out-door recreations I am most fond 
of fishing, and I soon found that he, too, 
was an ardent fisherman, and so we 
planned trips together. Sometimes we 
went away for two or three days together 
on fishing excursions; but no matter 
what we fished for, or whether our luck 
was good or bad, my hook was always 



Won Through Friendship. 143 

baited for my friend^s soul. A year 
and a half went by, nearly two years. 
Three times during that period he had 
come near to death in those times of 
awful giving way to drink. The last 
time my power over him as his friend 
had become so strong that, as he was 
getting better, but before he had gone 
out to his store, he sent for me to come 
in and see him. I went to see him, and 
he opened his heart to me, and told me 
what a terrible time he had had, and 
how ashamed he was to so demean him- 
self before his family and in the eyes of 
his friends. This was my opportunity, 
and I used it as far as my ability could 
reach. I told him there was only one 
hope, and that was in Jesus Christ. He 
had been trying to save himself from 
his besetting sin, and he had failed again 
and again. But there was one hope 
he had not tried, and that was Christ. 
I talked with him a long time, and though 
he heard me with great respect, and 



144 Soul-Winning Stories. 

permitted me to pray with him, it 
seemed impossible for him to beheve 
that even Christ could give him power 
over this sin which had so debased him. 
A series of union evangelistic meetings 
were being held in one of the churches 
of the city at the time, and I asked him 
if he would go with me that evening, and 
he promised to do so. When we arrived 
at the church it was packed to the door 
and I took him around with me to the 
side door, and up on the platform, where 
seats were reserved for the ministers 
and singers. My friend seemed almost 
frightened to be in such a conspicuous 
place, but it was the only way to get 
into the house, and so he yielded. 
The sermon was a plain, heart-searching 
one that made everybody look at Christ 
as the divine Saviour. Just as the 
preacher was getting well started a mes- 
senger came, and tapping me on the 
shoulder said that my wife desired me 
to come to the parsonage, nearly a quar- 



Won Through Friendship, 145 

ter of a mile away. I feared very much 
to leave my friend, and yet, not knowing 
what was desired, I felt I must respond 
to the call. Asking m}^ friend to wait 
until my return, even if the meeting 
should adjourn, I slipped back to the 
rear of the platform and hurried home. 
I found it was only a stray couple wait- 
ing to get married, and, I never married 
a couple more impatiently. I performed 
the ceremony as quickly as possible, and 
ran all the way back to the church, 
hoping and praying that the minister 
might preach a long sermon that night. 
The sermon was not yet done. I slipped 
in beside my friend, and I saw that his 
interest and his hope seemed greatly 
deepened. When the invitation was 
given to go into the inquiry-room at the 
close of the sermon, and I turned to him 
and said, "Shall we go?'' he yielded 
without any further urging, and when we 
got down into the inquiry-room we went 
away into a quiet corner by ourselves, 



146 Soul- Winning Stories. 

and there on our knees, while I prayed, 
he surrendered his whole heart and life 
to Jesus Christ as his Lord and King. 
The next Sunday I had the indescribable 
joy of receiving him into the church. 

Many times since then we have talked 
the matter over together, and again and 
again he has assured me that I never would 
have won him to Christ if I had not first 
won his friendship. He declares that 
it was his love for me that led him finally 
to have courage to hope that he might 
love Christ as I did, and find in Christ's 
love the help which I believed was there 
for him. 

We still go fishing together sometimes, 
and I shall not forget, while memory- 
remains, one summer afternoon sitting 
in the boat on the lake as the sun was 
dropping low in the west. We were 
looking about at the green wall of the 
mountains and speaking of its beauty. 
Gradually the conversation drifted to 
a more personal quarter and we spoke 



Won Through Friendship. 147 

appreciatively and reminiscently of the 
many good times we had had together 
on such excursions. Suddenly turning 
to me, his eyes filled with tears, and 
with a glow of thanksgiving on his 
usually pale cheek, he said in a trem- 
bling, hushed voice, "All that I am I 
owe to you/' I would not have ex- 
changed that short sentence and the 
look that came with it for any wealth or 
honor that the world has power to give, 
and I went home that night with a new 
sense of appreciation of the blessedness 
of the privilege of being a soul-winner. 



/ 



CHAPTER XI 

AN OLD SAINT'S SURPRISE 



CHAPTER XI. 

ONE of the most delightful scenes 
I ever witnessed in the work 
of saving souls — and altogether 
the most delightful and gratifying 
experiences I have ever known have been 
in that work — was the intense surprise 
and exquisite joy I once saw in the face 
of a white-haired old man at the con- 
version of his son. It occurred in the fol- 
lowing way : I found in one of my pas- 
torates in a large Eastern city an old man 
who was pre-eminently the saint of the 
church. He had been there for a long 
time and his godly life, his spiritual tone, 
and the graces of the Spirit manifested 
in all his conduct marked him out as a 
Christian of the noblest type. It was not 
an imcommon thing to have people on 
the outside of the church, men rough 



152 Soul-Winning Stories. 

and coarse, who did not take much inter- 
est in Christian things, say about him : 
"Well, I will say, if ever there was a 

Christian, Father T is one." The 

old man had not much money to give to 
the church; he was not specially gifted 
in prayer or particularly eloquent in his 
testimony; but he was a good man. He 
had no enemies. Everybody loved him.' 
And, as they say in Washington J "he 
had the ear of the House " every time he 
got up to speak. The old man had our 
ears because he had our hearts. 

About the time I came to the church 
the old man's son, who had been away 
from home a long time, came back from 
his travels and work in the West and 
settled down near his father and went 
into business. The boy had been well 
brought up in a Christian way, but he 
had gone away from home very early 
and had drifted entirely away from 
religious things. He had been in the 
mines and had associated with wicked 



An Old Saint's Surprise. 153 

and reckless men and women until he 
had simply become indifferent to religious 
affairs. The old home teaching and 
example of his father (his mother had 
died young) had hedged him in, how- 
ever, and kept him back from shameful 
and outrageous sins. He did not drink 
or gamble, and lived, so far as the world 
could see, an orderly, moral, and upright 
life. But his heart was hard toward 
God, and he had been so long away from 
the church, and had lived prayerless so 
many years that, while he was polite and 
good-humored about it, he let you have 
no chance to get inside to the real citadel 
of his heart in any attempt to win him 
to Christ. 

The attitude of the son was a great 
sorrow to his father. He had been pray- 
ing for hun all the years, and it was the 
longing of his heart to see him a happy 
and useful Christian. Happily the bond 
between the father and the son was un- 
usually strong and tender. The boy 



154 Soul-Winning Stories. 

could not say too much concerning his 
father's goodness. He had unbounded 
faith in the sincerity and genuineness of 
his father's religion. During the year 
and more that I was trying to win him 
to an open confession of Christ, the one 
hopeful thing about the attempt was this 
fact, that I knew he never doubted his 
father's reUgion. The nearesx. I ever 
got home to him in private conversation 
was when I would turn to the subject 
of his boyhood and get him to talk about 
his boyish experiences. That was always 
sure to bring out something about his 
father's religious life, something about 
the family worship, the Bible reading 
and the prayers that were a part of every 
day's life. Sometimes he would wind up 
such a talk by saying : " I do not want 
you to think that it is my father's fault 
that I am not a Christian. If ever a man 
lived right before his children it was my 
father, and during all the years that I 
have been away in the mines and in the 



An Old Saint^s Surprise. 155 

mountains, among wicked men, going 
months and months without ever seeing a 
church or attending a religious service, 
not knowing when Sunday had come 
except that it was wash-day, I never 
went to bed at night without thinking 
of my father^s family prayers. And if 
I had never seen another Christian, my 
father has lived so honestly and so truly 
a Christian life in my presence that I 
should always know there was one 
Christian/' 

Now when a man would say a thing like 
that, and say it so loyally and earnestly 
that his cheeks would glow and his eyes 
glisten with moisture, you would think 
you had almost won him. So I thought, 
only to be disappointed again and again. 

You have seen an old snag of a tree 
growing beside the road. It has been 
struck by lightning, probably, and split 
down through the center until most of 
the top is gone. One side is dead en- 
tirely. There is no sign of life anywhere 



156 Soul-Winning Stories. 

about the main trunk to be discovered 
from without. If you see it for the first 
time in winter you think it is entirely 
dead, and you are very much astonished 
along in April to see one little branch up 
near the top on which the buds begin 
to swell out, and after a while the leaves 
break forth, and you see that the heart of 
the tree is still alive. It is alive in that 
one spot; but for that one outcropping 
of life, there would be no hope for the 
gnarled and wounded tree. Well, it was 
that way with my young business friend. 
While he was still a young man in age, 
he was past middle age in experience with 
the kind of associations that had wounded 
and seared his spiritual nature. There 
was just one green spot of hfe left in him; 
that was his love for his father and his 
unshaken faith in his father's Chris- 
tianity. 

Time passed on, month after month. 
Again and again I sought opportunities 
for conversation with him. These were 



An Old Saint's Surprise. 157 

never hard to obtain. He was a bright, 
genial fellow, seemed to like me very 
much, and always met me with a certain 
kind of frankness when I broached the 
subject of religion; but I soon discovered 
that he always met me at the outside 
gate, and kept the talk out there, and I 
never got inside, where he really lived. 
He was an enigma to me. He was so 
friendly, both to me and to the church, 
and yet toward God and Christ he was 
as hard as a rock. I think of all the 
men I have ever known of his type, a 
man so good in many ways, he was the 
most utterly indifferent to the claims 
of God. 

Every now and then his father would 
speak to me about it, and beg me not 
to forget him or cease to pray for his 
conversion. A very powerful and suc- 
cessful revival of religion passed by, but 
without winning my young friend. He 
came but little to the meetings, though 
he always came on Sunday; but they 



158 Soul-Winning Stories. 

seemed to have no effect whatever upon 
him, and when the meetings closed, and 
he was still outside, the aged father's 
heart was very heavy. 

Now Father T himself was a very 

faithful soul-winner. While I doubt if 
he ever passed a waking hour during 
all that year that he did not have some 
thought and prayer in his heart about 
the conversion of his son, he did not, on 
that account, neglect others. No man 
in the church was more alert in looking 
out for opportunities to say a good word 
for his Master or to reach out a helping 
hand to one in the dark, or to a weak 
soul that was ready to faint. 

So time passed on during the early 
summer till we came to a wet Sunday 
night. How well I remember it! I had 
prepared, with unusual care, an appeal 
to the unconverted, with special reference 
to some people whom I hoped would 
be present and in whom at the time I 
was interested. But when, that after- 



An Old Saint's Surprise. 159 

noon, it began to storm, and the night 
was so rainy that we did not go up into 
the main auditorium, but turned the 
people who came into the Sunday-school 
room, I was bitterly disappointed. I 
do not know when I have been so dis- 
appointed concerning a stormy Sunday 
night, which I confess is always a great 
trial to me, as on that night. During 
the opening service it seemed to me that 
the sermon I had prepared would be 
entirely out of place, as I thought that 
the few who had ventured out through 
the unusual storm were all Christians. 
But while they were singing the last 
hymn the son of my old saint came in 
and sat down in the back row of chairs 
near the door. Suddenly there was a 
flash of light through the black cloud 
that had been overshadowing my sky. 
I determined to direct my whole sermon 
at that man. So far as I knew, he 
was the only man in that small audi- 
ence who was not a Christian, and I 



160 Soul-Winning Stories. 

secretly purposed to concentrate all my 
thought and hope on him, and preach 
my sermon ta him as if we were the only 
two in the audience. As Nehemiah 
prayed to God for the right Y/ord when 
he stood before the king in the palace at 
Shushan, so I breathed out my heart 
to God during the remaining verses of 
that hymn that this might be the hour 
for the capture of the man^s soul. God 
greatly helped me in preaching. I de- 
livered the discourse with unwonted 
zest and earnestness. But toward the 
chair near the center, in the rear of the 
room, where that young merchant sat, 
I directed my gaze. After a few minutes 
he seemed restless under it and uneasy, 
and then he gave himself up to it, and 
we two men seemed looking into each 
other's squIs. 

At the close of the sermon I asked the 
congregation to sing a hymn, and invited 
any who would like to ask the prayers 
of Christian people that their own sins 



An Old Saint's Surprise. 161 

might be forgiven to rise, the congrega- 
tion remaining seated. There were 
four verses in the hymn, and three verses 
were sung, and no one rose. My eyes 
were on my young friend. His face was 
white, and I could see that there was a 
Ufe and death struggle going on in his 
soul. There he sat, motionless as a 
statue, as if he were glued to his seat. 
To me the suspense and agony were 
something terrible, for I somehow had 
it borne in on me that if I could not win 
him there and then I would never have 
so good a chance again. When the 
third verse was completed I raised my 
hand to the pianist and began to speak. 
Very quietly and very solemnly I went on 
to say just what was in my heart — that 
I believed some soul was making a life 
and death struggle then and there, and 
I greatly feared that if it grieved the 
Holy Spirit at that time the struggle 
would never be so hard for it again. It 
would always find it easier to shut God 



162 Soul-Winning Stories. 

out after that, and it would shut him 
out at last, and thus shut itself out of 
heaven. "Now,'' I continued, "we will 
sing this last verse, and it is not only a 
verse of song, it is an open gate into 
heaven, and I am sure some one ought 
to enter it." Scarcely the first line of 
the hymn had been sung when my young 
business friend leaped to his feet. 
"Leaped" is the proper word, for he had 
been holding himself so tense, and had 
been so stiffening himself against such 
conviction, that he simply had to leap 
from it in order to conquer. Until he 
stood up there had been no sign of emo- 
tion about his face except its pallor; but 
the moment he was on his feet, and had 
really commiitted himself, the tears began 
to run down his cheeks, and he threw him- 
self upon his knees. With difficulty 
mastering my own great emotion at this 
sudden and glorious victory, I quietly 
said that one young man had asked our 
prayers and was praying for himself; 



An Old Saint's Surprise. 163 

and urging all to unite their prayers 
for hini; we knelt in prayer. 

After several had led briefly in prayer, 
on rising from our knees, I called for a 
brief testimony meeting, and very soon 

Father T was on his feet. During 

the course of his remarks, which were 
devoted almost entirely to his own ex- 
perience, he finally spoke very tenderly 
of his joy that ^Hhe young man'^ had 
started that evening for heaven. It at 
once became apparent to the audience, 
most of whom were acquainted with 
both the father and son, that the old 
man, who had been sitting much further 
front, did not know who it was that had 
risen. Another old man, a few seats 
away, was so overcome with this, that, 
half rising out of his seat, he shouted: 

"Why, Father T , don't you know? 

It is Albert that started.'^ 

I never saw such surprise and unutter- 
able joy mingled in a human face as I 
then saw on the face of that dear old 



164 Soul-Winning Stories. 

man. He turned around, looking back- 
ward toward where his son sat, his hands 
upraised, and cried out in broken tones: 
'^Oh, is it my boy? Is it my boy?'^ 
y In the meantime the young man had 

found the Lord, and he met his father's 
looks with a joyous and reverent expres- 
sion; and when his father sat down, 
unable to speak further on account of 
his emotion, the son rose to speak, and 
I have never heard a sweeter tribute of 
love and veneration paid by a son to his 
father than that young man gave out 
of the new Christian joy that had come 
to his heart. It was a blessed hour. 
We all thoroughly appreciated what it 
must be to be in heaven where the angels 
have "joy over one sinner that re- 
penteth.'' 



CHAPTER XII 



THE BOY IN THE DRY-GOODS BOX 



CHAPTER XII. 



THERE once appeared in my Sun- 
day-school a boy with the most 
wonderful head and the most 
captivating eyes that one could find 
in a year of travel and search. He was 
a little fellow, about ten years old, but 
oh, what a head ! It would have been the 
despair of an artist and at the same time 
his joy. A wealth of curls, great, dark 
eyes as gentle as a fawn's and with some- 
thing so appealing in them that they 
went straight to your heart. I turned 
to look at him again and again as I 
passed around through the Sunday- 
school. He evidently came from a home 
of moderate circumstances, for while 
his clothing was neat and clean, it was 
well patched. A few weeks passed by 
and the little boy was very regular at the 



168 Soul-Winning Stories. 

Sunday-school and won the hearts of 
all who came in touch with him. 

One Sunday he did not come. Both 
the superintendent and myself missed 
him. Then, when he did not come the 
next Sunday, we went to look him up. 
It was just before Christmas time, and 
the weather was very cold. From his 
address on the class record we found 
that his home was on one of the very 
poorest streets in the poorest section of 
the city. Going to the place, a revelation 
of poverty came to us that was heart- 
rending. There was the mother and 
father and five children, and they lived 
in two Uttle rooms. One of these rooms 
was a dark room, without a window in 
it, and they rented this daytimes to a man 
who worked nights. The family had 
been in good circumstances up to within 
a year of the time of our meeting. The 
father had earned good wages, and they 
had lived well. Then the firm for which 
he labored had gone out of business, and 



The Boy in the Dry-goods Box. 169 

it had thrown him out of employment. 
They had come East, hoping to better 
their condition, but had struck hard 
times. The father had walked the 
streets day after day hunting for work. 
In the meantime they had pawned their 
wedding presents, and one after another 
had pawned or sold quite a library of nice 
books, and then, as things grew worse, 
all their better clothing had gone the 
same way. Day after day the father 
searched for work. The mother, who 
was frail and in delicate health, did what 
she could. Now and then the father 
got a little job to do, but as his good 
clothing went, and as he lost heart, it 
became harder and harder to get any 
employment at all. 

And so it happened, as Christmas time 
drew near, that they were on the very 
verge of starvation. They had got down 
to bread and tea, and not much of that. 
To make matters woi*se the little boy 
had fallen ill, and when the superintend- 



170 Soul-Winning Stories. 

ent and myself hunted them out the 
Uttle fellow was terribly sick with typhoid 
fever and was lying on a little bed made 
up in a dry-goods box. Without proper 
medicine and care I have no doubt he 
would have died within the next two or 
three days. Of course we gave them 
temporary relief at once, and saw to it 
that they had proper food and that the 
little boy had a chance to get well. I 
immediately interested myself in finding 
employment for the man, and was suc- 
cessful. Both the man and his wife had 
been Christians and members of the 
church in their former home, and the 
imexpected help which had come to them 
from the church at a time when their 
hearts were so broken and when they 
seemed to be plunged into the very 
depths of despair seemed to them to 
come direct from God and proved to be the 
cause of a spiritual quickening to which 
their hearts responded, and they entered 
with renewed joy upon the Christian life» 



The Boy in the Dry-goods Box. 171 

None the less beautiful was its effect 
upon the little boy. I think if an angel 
from heaven had come down to that 
tenement house and brought them help 
in their time of need, it would not have 
seemed to the little boy more really to 
have come from God. He had been 
brought up by a good true mother and 
had always said his prayers and in a way 
believed in God and the Bible; but now, 
as the fever left him and he grew again 
into health and strength, his whole heart 
went out to the Lord in reverent love, 
and he was one of the sweetest and most 
charming of young Christians. 

Not long after this the father was able 
to secure permanent employment in a 
suburban town some miles distant, and 
I did not see them for a good while. Per- 
haps a year and a half had passed when, 
going to speak one afternoon at a meeting 
three or four miles from the town where 
they were living, at the close of the meet- 
ing a yoimg lad leaped upon the plat- 



172 Soul-Winning Stories. 

form, and though he seemed six inches 
taller than when I had seen him last, 
that beautiful face, that glorious curly 
head and the fawn-like eyes could not 
be forgotten, as he eagerly cried : " Mr. 
Banks, do you know me? Do you know 
me? " I was happy to tell him that I 
knew him, and happier still to listen to 
his happy story of the joyous home life 
they were having together imder the 
pleasant surroundings that had come to 
them. 

Five years passed away, and I heard 
nothing further of my young friend. I 
had myself removed to a distant city 
where, as pastor of a large church, with 
many outside engagements, I had enough 
to occupy my mind; but ever and anon 
I would think of my little boy in the 
dry-goods box and wonder what the 
future had in store for him. About this 
time I had an engagement to lecture in 
a Western town of several thousand 
inhabitants. So far as I knew I was 



The Boy in the Dry-goods Box. 173 

not personally acquainted with anyone 
in the town. The arrangements for the 
lecture had been made by a committee, 
and my only personal interest in it was 
to go and deliver my message and come 
away. I arrived in town late in the 
evening, my train being delayed, and 
hurried directly from the station to the 
hall. There was a large audience, and 
at its close a number of people came up 
to make themselves known to me and to 
shake hands. They were all strangers, 
and while I was shaking hands with them 
I suddenly became interested in a very 
peculiar circumstance. I can't remem- 
ber just how it began, but all at once I 
knew that a woman had one of my hands 
in both of hers, and a man had 
the other hand in both of his. The 
man's eyes were full of tears, and tears 
were freely raining down the woman's 
face. Just then she lifted the hand she 
held to her lips and kissed it reverently. 
I was utterly dumbfounded, not knowing 



174 Soul-Winning Stories. 

what it could mean, when suddenly 
lifting my eyes from them I looked into 
the eyes of a young fellow over six feet 
tall. His eyes were shining with tears, 
too, but his younger face was all aglow 
with excited joy. In a moment the 
meaning of it all flashed over me. It 
was my boy of the dry-goods box. That 
wonderful head of curling hair, that 
gloriously chiseled face, those great dark 
eyes — they never could belong to but 
one person whom I had ever seen. As 
the meaning of it all burned into my 
brain my own heart broke with happy 
tenderness and I furnished my part of 
the tears. 

I was to stay over night at the hotel, 
and after a little talk with the father and 
mother I took the yoimg fellow with 
me to my room and talked with him 
till past midnight. I found that the 
family had gone back to their old home 
surroimdings and were very comfortably 
situated. The boy had managed to 



The Boy in the Dry-goods Box. 175 

secure a very good education, and though 
not yet seventeen, he was one of the 
secretaries of the Young Men's Christian 
Association in an important town, and it 
was his hope and purpose to prepare 
himself for the Christian ministry and 
give his life to the winning of souls to 
Christ. 

The next morning, having a little 
time on my hands, I took occasion to find 
out how the boy was regarded in the 
town, and from all quarters I learned, 
what I was ready to believe from my 
intercourse with him the night before, 
that he was a young man of remarkable 
influence for good, and in the church 
which he attended, in his Bible class, 
and among the men whom he met in the 
Association work, he was everywhere 
regarded as a noble example of conse- 
crated Christian manhood. 

As the train carried me awav toward 
my home my heart was full of happy 
thanksgiving to God. I said to myself 



176 Soul-Winning Stories. | 

i 

over and over again, "No one pays like •! 

God." For where could there have been , 
so small an investment that could have I 
yielded back so large a return? Surely ^ 
for either the minister or the layman I 
there is no gold mine so rich in possi- 
bilities as that of soul-winning. : 



CHAPTER XIII 
WAYSIDE CONVERSIONS 



CHAPTER XIII. 



THAT which adds romantic interest 
to the hfe of every earnest 
worker for Christ is the oppor- 
tunity which ever and anon presents it- 
self to win souls. Suddenly, without 
any expectation or preparation, there 
springs up from the roadside of hfe 
one of the rarest privileges in all one's 
experience. It was so in the life of 
Jesus. He went walking by the seaside 
and found the two young men mending 
their nets. He had a little talk with 
them, saw the time to win them, and 
led them away after him forever. Going 
down the street he sees a yoimg tax- 
gatherer at his desk. He knows that 
this young men is restless and uneasy, 
and that now is the time to win him to 
better things. Christ steps across the 



180 Soul-Winning Stories, 

street, has a little talk with him, and 
when it is over Matthew closes up his 
business, and the next we hear of him 
he is giving a dinner in honor of Jesus. 
The life of Jesus was full of such ex- 
periences. It was at the close of a weary 
and dusty day that he was waiting out- 
side of Samaria when the sinful woman 
came with her water-pot, and through 
the simple incident of asking for a drink 
of water Christ got hold of her heart 
and not only won her to himself, but also 
won a great multitude in that town. 
Now we are to be like our Lord. Our 
lives mav be romantic and abound in 
these unique and beautiful victories if, 
like Jesus, we are ever on the alert to 
seize hold of the passing opportunity. 
I remember well one morning in a certain 
city where I was pastor and was in the 
midst of a great revival. Every day 
I was preparing a sermon for delivery 
the same evening, and God was greatly 
blessing the work. Many people were 



'Wayside Conversions. 181 

being converted. One morning while I 
was in my study preparing the sermon 
for that night^s meeting my wife came 
to the study and told me that a messen- 
ger had come from a family whose name 
was entirely unknown to me, asking 
if I could go to the house to see a yoimg 
woman who was sick. I sent word that 
I would go a little later in the morning, 
and went back to my sermon. When 
the sermon was completed I went to 
make the visit. 

Arriving at the home I found that none 
of the family were members of any 
church, and though some of them had 
been to hear me preach I had up to this 
time had no knowledge of them whatever. 
The young woman who had sent for 
me was about twent}^ years old and was 
very ill with consumption. It was evi- 
dent that she would never leave her 
room again until she left it for the grave. 
She had been shut in there, sick, for five 
months, and though none of the rest of 



182 Soul-Wmning Stories. 

the family were Christians, she had in 
some way that I do not now remember 
found the Lord. 

I was met at the door by the mother 
and ushered into a very pleasant room. 
I sat for a while at the bedside of the 
young lady and talked with her and the 
mother, first about the bright day, about 
the sunshine coming into the sick room, 
and such commonplace matters, until, 
incidentally, I turned to the mother and 
asked her if she was a Christian. She 
replied that she was not. I found, how- 
ever, that she had been hopefully con- 
verted when she was a young girl living 
on a farm in Pennsylvania, but for some 
reason she had not joined the church, 
and as is very usual in cases where people 
try to live a Christian Ufe outside of the 
church, she had failed, and now for many 
years had lived an entirely worldly life. 
She said she had wholly given up the idea 
that she would ever be a Christian; that 
she had remarked only the other day to 



Wayside Conversions, 183 

a friend that she was certain if she were 
to die she would be lost, and that she 
sometimes thought the day of grace had 
passed for her. 

You may well imagine that by this 
time I was thoroughly aroused. It 
seemed to me an awful thing to look 
upon that sick yoimg woman who was 
only waiting there for the angel of death 
in the presence of a mother who could not 
enter into any spiritual fellowship or 
commimion with her; and so, with my 
heart uplifted to God, I set myself de- 
liberately to win the mother to Christ 
then and there. I urged what God says 
in his book — that he is married to the 
backslider. I tried to make her see the 
providential opportunity which was here 
presented for her to renew her covenant 
of grace with the Lord. 

She was so unresponsive at first that, 
after talking with her ten or fifteen 
minutes, I came to the very edge of giving 
up. How many times we fail that way 



184 Soul-Winning Stories. 

when we are on the very verge of success. 
I honestly beUeve that more preachers 
fail of being successful evangelists and 
soul-winners in their pastorates because 
they give way too quick, both in the 
following up a public appeal and in per- 
sistently pursuing a private conversa- 
tion, than for any other one reason. 
But as I was just about to give up, the 
thought suddenly possessed me that 
perhaps this was the woman's last call 
— if I could not win her there beside her 
daughter's sick bed what hope was 
there that any one could ever win her? 
This thought gave me new energy, and I 
pursued the conversation not only with 
unabated but with increased resolution. 
The result was that at the close of a half- 
hour her heart was broken with deep 
conviction, and, sobbing and crying 
out to God for mercy, she knelt 
with me beside her daughter's bed, 
and while I prayed for her she 
gave herself imreservedly up to God, 



Wayside Conversions. 185 

and found forgiveness and peace in 
Christ. 

A few moments after we had risen 
from our knees the mother went and 
called in her sister, who was visiting her 
from her old home in Pennsylvania, and 
a younger daughter, thirteen years of 
age. Then as the mother went away 
from the room again for a moment, the 
daughter looked into my face, and with 
a radiance Uke that which shone in the 
face of Saint Stephen when his murder- 
ers bore testimony that it was as "the 
face of an angel,'' she said, "Oh, isn't 
this glorious! I have been lying here 
praying for this, night and day, for so 
many weeks." Thus I had a vision, a 
revelation, and I knew it was in answer 
to this daughter's prayers that salvation 
was come to this house. 

But the story is not yet complete. I 
turned around from the bedside to see 
standing there the aunt, whose face 
was red with weeping, and I said to her, 



186 Soul-Winning Stories. 

"Are you a Christian?^' And she an- 
Bwered, "No." And then I entered upon 
a new conversation. She frankly con- 
fessed that she had long desired to be 
a Christian, but there were so many 
things in the way — idols, she said, that 
she could never give up. But, making 
little of these things, I began to tell her 
the story of her sister's conversion before 
she had come into the room, and while 
I was telling her that story, and she 
was listening with great astonishment 
and evident emotion, the sister herself 
re-entered the room and came up and 
kissed her, and they sat and cried to- 
gether. 

Leaving the two women together for 
a moment, feeUng sure the problem 
would work itself out best that way, I 
tmned my attention to the little girl, a 
beautiful child of thirteen, and I saw 
by her eyes that the battle was won there 
before I began. Her heart opened to 
the Saviour as naturally as a flower 



Wayside Conversions. 187 

opens to the sun on a summer^s morning. 
Then we had another season of prayer, 
the aunt and the young girl praying for 
themselves, and the mother and the sick 
daughter and myself pleading with God 
for them, until they came to trust the 
Lord Jesus Christ and to rejoice in their 
faith in him. 

I was an hour and a quarter in that 
house. I had never been in it before; 
though two of them had heard me preach. 
I had never even known their names or 
had any personal conmiimication with 
them whatever. In that hour and a 
quarter, through God^s great grace and 
mercy, three souls had turned away 
from sin and had found peace in trusting 
the Lord Jesus as their Saviour. What 
a blessed wayside opportunity was that! 
But to take advantage of such opportu- 
nities we must live in the spirit of them. 
If I had been in a cold and heavy mood, 
and had gone to do my work in a spirit 
of formality, I could have visited that 



188 Soul-Winning Stories. 

sick girl and gone away and done noth- 
ing else for that house. And 3^et those 
souls were waiting for somebody to cap- 
ture them for the divine Lord. We 
need to be on the alert for the wayside 
opportunities. 



CHAPTER XIV I 

i 

THE RAILROAD REVIVAL \ 



CHAPTER XIV: 



SOME years ago I was pastor in a 
large city which is a great rail- 
road center. Tens of thousands 
of railroad men have their homes 
there and live either in the city or its 
suburbs. This fact impressed me on 
my first arrival, and as the months went 
on it became more and more apparent 
to my mind that the church was not 
sufficiently awake to the spiritual needs 
of this large and intelligent class of men. 
I set myself to work to devise some way 
of getting at the situation. Whatever 
measure of success may have come to 
me in the course of my ministry has been 
largely due to the fact that I have always 
tried to work as faithfully and with as 
much devotion as the most successful 
business man works. So I set myself 



\92 Soul-Winning Stories. 

to work to find a plan for calling the 
attention of these railroad men to Christ 
and the Gospel. 

After some weeks of thought and 
prayer I decided to have a series of 
revival meetings to which railroad men 
should be specially invited and in which 
sermons and prayers and everything 
should bear upon railroad men. I had 
printed many thousands of invitations 
specially addressed to railroad men. In 
these I stated in a frank and brotherly 
way my desire to preach the Gospel to 
railroad men and their families and the 
welcome they would receive at my church. 
These invitations I carried to all the 
great centers of railroad employment, 
and had them given out in all the great 
freight depots and shops in the city. 

The success of the movement in at- 
tracting the attention of railroad em- 
ployees far exceeded my expectations 
from the very start. Railroad men 
flocked to the services and some were 



The Railroad Revival. 193 

converted the very first evenings. But 
these men told of others who would not 
come with them, and wished they had 
some way of getting the Gospel to them 
where they worked. I caught at this 
suggestion at once, and visited the rail- 
road managers and superintendents and 
secured the privilege of speaking for 
twenty minutes of the noon hour in any 
of the shops or round-houses of the city. 
Then for over a month I went every 
week-day at noon to some great freight 
depot, or round-house, or workshop to 
hold service. Some men were converted 
in these meetings at noon, but the far 
greater result came from getting a hold 
upon men who were indifferent or preju- 
diced, and who followed us back to the 
service at night. 

When my strength began to weaken 
I secured the help of two faithful Chris- 
tian women who had been successful 
in working with railroad men, and they 
would give Bible readings which I would 



194 Soul-Winning Stories. 

follow at each service with special ex- 
hortation and invitation to accept Christ. 
I have never known so many railroad 
men to be converted in any one meeting. 
Baggagemen, expressmen, telegraphers, 
brakemen, freight-handlers, all had their 
representatives, and their wives and 
children came with them. Over two 
himdred and fifty united with the church 
of which I was pastor, and many found 
homes in other churches. 

Of course all were not railroad men 
who were brought under the influence 
of this revival and through God^s grace 
were saved. Naturally these railroad 
men had friends and neighbors, and 
when they began to be interested in the 
meetings they talked about them among 
their friends, and they came, too, and 
many of them were saved. T shall 
never forget some interesting and strik- 
ing cases developed in that meeting. 
One night I found at the altar a middle- 
aged man in great sorrow. He was 



The Railroad Revival. 195 

sobbing with grief, and the great aepths 
of his soul seemed to be broken up, and 
yet he found no peace. I talked with 
him and finally asked him why he did not 
accept Christ's promise outright and 
have peace. He said, "I cannot/' I 
asked him then why he came to the 
altar at all, that the invitation was only 
for those who would accept Jesus. His 
reply was that he could not stay away- 
His sense of sin was so keen, and the 
burden of guilt upon his soul so pressed 
him down, that when the invitation 
was given for sinners to come he could 
not stay in his seat. 

I continued to press him to be frank 
with me, until finally he told me all. 
He said that he worked in a brewery, 
and had been working in a brewery ever 
since he was a boy. He had a wife and 
six children depending on him for sup- 
port. He felt that it was a wicked 
business and that he could not be a 
Christian and continue in it, and yet he 



196 Soul- Winning Stories. 

did not know anything else, and if he 
gave it up his family would starve. 
The man was very anxious; the great 
beads of perspiration stood out on his 
forehead. It was the awful problem 
of his life. I urged that it was his 
business to accept Christ as his Saviour, 
to do the right thing and leave the result 
to God. I assured him that God would 
not let a man starve through doing right. 
I specially pushed home on him that 
passage where Christ says, "Seek ye 
first the kingdom of God and his right- 
eousness, and all these things shall be 
added unto you.'^ He was a strong 
man, a solid stanch German, and de- 
cision came slowly. But when it did 
come, it was all over. His face was 
transformed, and everybody around him 
knew that he had gained a victory over 
himself and his sin, and that Jesus Christ 
had made the conquest of his soul. He 
left the brewery the next day. In two 
weeks I found him a good position, and 



The Railroad Revival. 197 

before I left the city he was earning a 
much larger salary than he had ever 
earned before, and he and his family 
were very happy in the church. 

I well remember another evening,' 
when, as I was passing around through 
the rear of the congregation while the 
after-meeting was going on at the altar, 
I came across a young lady who seemed 
the very picture of despair. She had 
an intelligent keen face, but the inner 
agony was written all over it. I stopped 
to talk with her, and after a little she 
admitted that she was deeply affected 
by the service and was sorely conscience- 
stricken. But she said^ ^^I can't be a 
Christian.'' 

" Why?" I asked. 

"Not because I do not want to," she 
said, "but because I have become so 
entangled with worldly and sinful things 
that there is no way out. God knows 
I would give my life to be clear of them, 
but I can't get out! I can't get out!'* 



198 Soul-Winning Stories. 

These last phrases she fairly moaned 
from her lips like a wail of despair. 

I talked with her until I saw that no 
further advantage could be gained by 
conversation there, and then arranged 
for her to come and see me the next day. 
Then she told me her story. It was a 
sad story of misfortune and sin and 
death on the part of others, which had 
at last thrown the burden of an invalid 
mother and little brothers and sisters 
upon shoulders unable to bear so heavy 
a load, and she was working now as an 
acrobat in some low entertainment hall 
in the city. I urged her, as I had the 
man from the brewery, that it was 
God^s world, and that one could do right 
in it and trust him for the result. She 
went away sad, but promised to come 
to the evening meeting. That after- 
noon I went to see a noble Christian 
woman, a woman of wealth and high 
social position, but who was also rich 
in human sympathy and love. I told 



The Railroad Revival. 199 

her the story of this poor girl, and, as I 
had expected, she was immediately 
awake to the situation and was ready to 
be her friend. That night I introduced 
them, and from that hour they were 
sisters. The poor girl who had lost all 
hope became a happy Christian, and 
through her rich blessings, both tem- 
poral and spiritual, found their way to 
all the unfortunate family. 

One interesting feature of this revival 
was that its advertised purpose to reach 
railroad men attracted wide attention, 
and a number of traveling railroad men 
having a night in the city came to the 
meetings, and several such were con- 
verted. These carried the fire-brands 
into different parts of the country, so 
that in my travels during years since 
I have had strangers speak to me in 
regard to blessings received at that meet- 
ing more frequently than concerning 
any other revival it has been my pri\dlege 
to lead. 



CHAPTER XV 
ON THE TRAIL OF A SOUL 



CHAPTER XV. 



I SHALL never forget a lowering 
morning, years ago, when I went 
into the pulpit of a large city 
church of which I was pastor, de- 
pressed by the unusual gloom of the day. 
One of the hardest burdens I have had 
to carry in my ministry is bad weather 
on Sunday. It was not really storming 
on this Sunday morning, but it was cold 
and raw, and the air was so heavy that 
it seemed to weigh one down. 

The first thing that started me out 
of my depression after I had entered 
the pulpit was the face of one of the most 
striking looking men I have ever seen. It 
was not only that it was a new face, but 
that there was something about the 
eyes and the whole look of the man which 
aroused me. My depression was for- 



204 Soul-Winning Stories. 

gotten; for me there was only one man 
in that congregation, and he was that 
stranger. I remember well the theme 
that morning. It was the cowardice 
of Aaron, and his poor, weak, shifty lie 
to Moses when the stronger brother de- 
manded of the weaker one the story of 
the golden calf. The lesson which I 
drew out of it that day, and which I 
crowded home on the people with all 
the power that was in me, was that we 
were responsible for letting things take 
their own course and go wrong; that we 
had no right to go on permitting our 
friends and our circumstances in social 
and business relations to carry us away 
from God. 

I say I crowded this message home on 
the people, but as a matter of fact, so 
far as I was personally conscious, I only 
pressed it home on one man. I had 
scarcely opened my theme and gotten 
on fire with it before I detected his inter- 
est and was sure that he winced under 



On the Trail of a Soul. 205 

the application of the truth to himself. 
During the singing of the last hymn I 
mentally determined that I would intro- 
duce myself to him at the close of the 
service and find out who he was. But 
"man proposes and God disposes.^' I 
had scarcely pronounced the benediction 
before my man and his wife had slipped 
down the aisle and were gone. 

I immediately sought to know who 
he was, and learned that he was one of 
the wealthiest business men in the city, 
a man of reserved temperament, who lived 
in a great mansion in one of the most 
fashionable suburbs. I confess I was 
greatly disappointed to hear all this. As 
a matter of theory I believed that God 
was as interested in rich men as in poor 
ones and that Jesus Christ was as able 
to save this man as he would be if he 
were some struggling lawyer or clerk. 
But as a matter of fact I had had a good 
deal more experience with tire other 
class, and my optimism and enthusiasm 



206 Soul-Winning Stories. 

in regard to being able to follow up my 
message for the man's help and comfort 
had received a great check. 

I went on with the other duties of the 
day, but during the Sunday-school and 
all the afternoon ever and anon my 
stranger of the morning would come 
back and look up at me with those 
piercing but anxious eyes through which 
God had let me have a look into his 
conscience until I could read his soul. 
Somehow I knew this man was not a 
Christian. I felt as sure as I could be 
that he had been greatly convicted of 
sin under the sermon of the morning, 
and more and more I felt that I had no 
right to leave it where it was. 

I had a very uncomfortable afternoon. 
On one hand something said to me, "You 
will spoil everything if you follow this 
man up. If the Holy Spirit used your 
message for his good this morning, you 
should be grateful. But he would no 
doubt resent anything you could say if 



On the Trail of a Soul. 207 

you were to go and visit him personally/' 
On the other hand something else said, 
"God used you to carry his message 
to this man's conscience. Just as surely 
as Peter saw the poor crippled man and 
his conviction, you saw this man dumb 
before God's word. Perhaps no other 
man will ever have so good a chance 
to win this man's soul as you have now. 
Perhaps, just because he is rich and 
prosperous, preachers are afraid of him. 
If you let him alone for a few days, he 
may be harder than ever. What are 
you a preacher for if not to follow up 
God's message when you see that it has 
gone home?" On the whole, I was greatly 
worried. I awoke several times in the 
night, and every time I saw that stran- 
ger's face and looked into those haunting 
eyes. 

Monday morning came, and yet I was 
uncertain what I ought to do. The 
hard nerve-giving of Simday always 
leaves even the strongest preacher who 



208 Soul-Winning Stories. 

is of a nervous temperament a little on 
the ragged edge on Monday morning,' 
and so the objections to going to see 
this man at his house seemed multiplied 
on Monday, though throughout the fore- 
noon, again and again, his face came back 
to me, and I felt that I should always 
have a sense of defeat and failure unless 
I sought personally to press God's mes- 
sage home upon his soul. 

At lunch I spoke to my wife about it,^ 
and told her how I was haunted by the 
man's face. I also told of what I had 
learned of his wealth, and the style in 
which he lived, and of my fear that he 
would resent being followed up. I re- 
marked that perhaps if I let him alone 
he would come again, while if I followed 
him up now I might lose him altogether. 
I think if she had sided with this view 
I would have settled down quite content 
that it was right. But, to my surprise, 
she was dead against it. She urged 
that I had better go at once and see him; 



On the Trail of a Soul. 209 

that the whole matter seemed provi- 
dential, and at the worst it could do 
no harm to let the man know that I was 
interested in him. I was not at all 
pleased to have her take this view, but 
having asked her advice I was bound 
to take it seriously into consideration. 
The result was that a little after two 
oVlock that Monday afternoon, in a 
pouring rain, I hired a closed carriage, 
took my wife with me, and we drove 
some three miles into the country suburb 
where stood the mansion of the man 
who had been to hear me preach the 
morning before. When we arrived at 
the gate, we decided that it was best for 
me to go in alone, so that I might have a 
freer chance to approach him as to his 
personal religion. I never did anything 
so diffidently in my life. I fairly trem- 
bled as I went up the walk. I rang the 
bell in fear. A servant came and ushered 
me into the parlor. A little later the 
door opened at the farther end of the 



210 Soul-Winning Stories. 

room, and through it came my strange^' 
of yesterday. When he saw me a 
startled look went over his face. He 
came forward and took my hand in a 
long grasp as he said, "This is a strange 
thing. I have been thinking of you 
ever since I heard you preach yesterday 
morning. I thought of driving in again 
last night, but I have not been well, and 
my wife feared for me to do it. To-day I 
have thought of going to see you, but the 
storm kept me back. How did you happen 
to come to see me through all this rain?^' 
Then I just opened my heart to him 
and told him the v/hole story which I 
have tried to tell you; only in this case 
we were two men sitting close together 
with our eyes on each other^s faces and 
our hearts greatly moved. He told me 
that the sermon the day before had 
seemed to be God's message to him, and 
that he felt greatly condemned that he 
had so long neglected making an open 
surrender of himself to Jesus Christ. 



On the Trail of a Soul. 211 

After we had talked awhile, I asked him 
if I might pray with him, and he said 
it would be a great comfort to him and 
he would like his wife to be present. He 
went out and brought her in and intro- 
duced her, repeated to her something 
of the conversation, and then I prayed 
with them. The Holy Spirit was present 
in that room during that prayer. Our 
hearts were strangely warmed. 

When we arose from our knees I shall 
never forget the face or words of my 
new friend. His face was bathed in 
tears; his eyes shone with a new light; 
he grasped me by the hand and ex- 
claimed, "I thank you with all my 
heart. You are the first man in twenty- 
five years who has ever asked me about 
my soul or asked permission to pray in 
my house.'' 

That prayer and conversation marked 
the beginning of a new Christian life 
in that household. 



CHAPTER XVI 
A WAYSIDE CAPTURE 



CHAPTER XVi: 

I WAS once a pastor in a part of an 
Eastern city where there were a 
number of large manufacturing 
plants, many of them employing several 
hundred and some of them as many 
as a thousand young men or women, 
or both. I was trying the experiment 
of a special series of services to young 
people for Sunday evenings, with a view 
to securing conversions in the after- 
service which followed each sermon. I 
was very desirous of reaching these 
young working people, and finally con- 
cluded that the best way to do it was to 
go directly to them myself with the cards 
of invitation. So, with a great bag of 
these cards, giving the themes and dates 
of the series of sermons and a kindly- 
worded invitation, I presented myself day 



216 Soul-Winning Stories. 

after day at the noon hour beside the gate 
of one manufacturing plant after another, 
and handed one of these invitations 
to each person coming out or going in. 
Sometimes they were thrown away, on 
rare occasions they were resented ; but for 
the most part they were received kindly, 
and my church was crowded to standing 
room by the young people who responded 
to the invitations. 

One day while I was making these 
rounds I took my stand before a factory 
employing several hundred young boys 
and girls. I was a few minutes early, 
and while I waited I saw one of the 
vilest specimens of humanity come up 
on the other side of the door from me, 
bowed down with a huge load of cheap 
sensational literature which he was hired 
to give out to these people. He was a 
wretched-looking creature. He was rag- 
ged and dirty; his face was seamed and 
bloated with vice, and the stuff he had 
to dispense was as vile as he was. He 



A Wayside Capture. 217 

laid down his burden and looked up at 
me with a leer and a grin as much as to 
say, "We are a pair. There are two of 
us." I confess I felt shaky. I never 
in my life felt so like running under fire. 
At first thought there was something 
so repulsive about the idea of entering into 
a competition with a fellow like that 
that it seemed the best thing I could do 
would be to slip away home. But that 
lasted only for a moment. Then I said 
to myself, "This is as it should be. This 
only shows the competition that is going 
on everywhere for every human soul. 
This man is the proper type of the devil 
whose servant he is. He is here to work 
for his master. He is trying to win 
these souls to the devil. I am trying 
to win them for Christ. I want to do 
them good, to draw them upward, and 
make them stronger and purer in every 
way. I will not nm. I will stand here 
and compete in my Master^s name, and 
for his sake, for the soul of every boy and 



218 Soul-Winning Stories. 1 

girl in this shop." And so I never en- 
joyed giving out cards so much as I did I 
that day when that sense of the com- 
petition which is going on for every \ 
human soul was so keenly felt by me. | 
But I was not the only one that day j 
who had noticed the seeming incon- \ 
gruity of the pastor of a big city church \ 
and a notorious drunken man standing j 
side by side at a factory door giving out ] 
their literature to the workmen. Just 
across the street, waiting, Uke a spider 
for a fly, was a liquor-saloon watching ' 
there for any waywsiTd boy or gu'l who 
might be drawn into its net. Lounging 
around the door were a number of fel- | 
lows who had visited inside too often 
for their own good, and who were alert 
for anything that would start a laugh. 
One of these noticed the giving out of I 
the literature over the way, and with an ; 
oath swore that that beat anything he j 
ever saw, and then he pointed out the j 
preacher and his associate. It raised a 



A Wayside Capture. 219 

laughJ They went inside and called 
out the bar-tender and some other 
half-drunken fellows to enjoy the joke 
with them. I heard the hilarity and 
imagined the cause of it, but paid no 
attention to it, except that after I had 
gotten through with the factory people 
I went across the street and, speaking 
pleasantly to them, handed every one 
of the loungers one of the invitations 
and told them I would be very glad 
indeed to welcome them the next Sunday 
night at my church. Some laughed and 
looked sheepish; one man swore he had 
no use for churches, and others simply 
looked at me dumbly and curiously and 
said nothing. 

Sitting there, lounging back against 
the wall of the saloon that day, was a 
man who had had a great deal of trouble 
and misfortune. He was a big, broad- 
shouldered, strong fellow, physically, and 
with many good qualities. But his wife 
had been ill for a long time in a sanitarium, 



220 Soul-Winning Stories. 

and his little children had had poor care, 
and he had drifted into drink, trying as 
so many thousands have done to drown 
his sorrow and still the aching of his heart 
over the wreckage of what had promised 
to be a happy home. He sat there, listen- 
ing to the rough fun, while I was giving 
out my cards across the street. He was 
about haK drunk, and so did not pay 
much attention to it until I came across 
and spoke to them. I had noticed him 
particularly, for there was something in 
his big figure and in his large fine eyes 
that told of the splendid man he might 
be. And when I had said I would be 
glad to welcome them at my church I 
had looked straight into his eyes. 

After I had gone on one of them began 
to curse and abuse me behind my back. 
He declared it was an insult for me to 
go around shoving my religion under 
people's noses and that I was only doing 
it because I was paid for it. But my big 
drayman was sobering up. My eyes 



A Wayside Capture. 221 

had appealed to his, and the warm pres- 
sure of the hand I had given hini and 
the card of invitation I had left in his 
hand were having their effect, and he 
at once began to defend me. He said, 
"That is not true. He is not paid for 
doing this. His church would pay him 
just as much as if he did not do it. Some 
of them would like him better if he did 
not do it. He could be at home reading 
in his library just as well as not; but he 
came down here, and stood over there 
beside that drunken scoundrel, and gave 
out those cards while we were poking 
fun at him, and then he came over here 
and shook hands with us when I am sure 
he knew we had been laughing at him, not 
because he is paid for it, but because 
he wanted to help us and do us good. 
You fellows can go on drinking and doing 
just as you please, but I am going to 
accept the preacher^s invitation, and I 
am going to take this card with me, and 
go up there to-morrow night and tell him 



222 Soul-Winning Stories. 

I have come to see what he can do for 
me.'' 

I have given the substance of that 
conversation as my drayman gave it 
to me afterward. Sunday night he was 
on hand. I was shaking hands at the 
door when he came in. I knew him the 
moment I got my eyes on him, and as 
I shook hands with him I said, "I am 
so glad that you have come.'' He was 
much pleased to think I remembered 
and told me he had accepted my invita- 
tion, and if the church could do him 
any good he would be glad of it. 

I do not remember what the sermon 
was about that night, except that it was 
about Jesus, and in the after-service 
the big drayman stood up and asked to 
be prayed for, and humbly and tearfully 
gave his heart to Christ. He became a 
very useful Christian. For my own 
personal comfort it was one of the hap- 
piest captures God has ever helped me 
to make. 



A Wayside Capture. 223 

Everything seemed to blossom for 
him after that day. His business pros- 
pered. His wife, concerning whom it 
had been feared that she was perma- 
nently ill mentally, recovered and came 
home to her family. It became a most 
beautiful Christian home. I have never 
gone near that city since to preach, 
week-night or Sunday, but that before 
the sermon began, sitting somewhere in 
the audience, I have looked into the 
eyes of my big drayman. God paid 
me better than I knew that day. I was 
competing for some of the souls inside 
the shop and he gave me some of them; 
but the most royal captiu-e of all was 
across the street among that crowd of 
drunken loungers. 



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